Gone Baby Gone
hen someone had a negative breast MRI in June, it is very hard to fathom how one is supposed to undergo a MRI-directed core biopsy in July. What tissue does one biopsy when there was nothing abnormal seen on the breast MRI (the definitive test) in the first place?
This morning, after being stuck back into the MRI tube, the radiologist who was to perform the core biopsy finally gave me the words I had been waiting two months to hear, “There’s nothing there for me to biopsy. You’re OK.”
You hear that folks? The rollercoaster has finally pulled back into the station so that I can get off. Whatever the guy saw on the mammogram is gone baby gone.
I haven’t heard from Dr. Dahlia yet, but Dr. Radiologist-Who-Makes-Sense suggests a repeat mammogram in 6 months as follow up. Now who was it who suggested that course of action last week? Oh right. That would have been me.
Please don’t think that I’m not thankful and grateful. I certainly am. I’m just stuck on the chain of illogic that got me to the place of almost being stuck in the breast with a needle this morning. And that relates to the first two questions of my post. If the June MRI was truly negative, then what the heck were they going to find today on MRI to biopsy?
But for now I’ll work on letting that go. What’s important is that this crisis has been averted and I get to enjoy this weekend with my family and friends…and lots of alcohol.
Phew!
Thanks for all your support!
Friday is B-Day
ope, Friday isn’t my birthday. I’ve already had one of those this year and that was enough. No, Friday is my biopsy day. I’m going to have this stupid, ridiculous, nonsensical biopsy despite having a negative breast MRI. Yes, I’m still pissed, but I’m a lot less freaked out than the last time I wrote.
You, my blogfriends, have been such a help. Thank you so much for your support. Even though I remain convinced that this is a gross waste of time and energy, reading your words made me face what was really eating at me: My hysterical conviction belief that this biopsy result was going to be Fate’s way of smacking me down again because I had gotten a bit too comfy.
You know the way it us for those of us raised to believe that life can never be happy? Hell, even when I took the MMPI and sneaked a look at the unfiltered results before my shrink could give me the prettied up version, saw that the printout said that I would have a miserable life. (Yes it really did say that.) You’ve spent so much of your life depressed, lonely, angry, waiting, and wanting. Happy was something you had for maybe a night, but never longer than 24 hours.
Recently though, you’ve noticed a change. Happy had been hanging out a bit more often with his friends content and peaceful. Of course you don’t acknowledge their presence. You fear they will respond to this acknowledgment like a floater in your eye: the more you try to look at it, the more it escapes from your vision. So you just move along, catching glimpses of happy in your peripheral vision.
At some point, however, you get a little brave. You start thinking to yourself, why am I afraid to say that my life is happy? Is it the same as the silly superstition that we had as residents where we could never say that the night was quiet when we were on call because inevitably the floodgates would open with patients? That was ridiculous. Patients didn’t decide to come to the hospital because someone had uttered “the q-word.” So yeah, I’m going to just look at happy, content, and peaceful and welcome them into my life. Excellent!
Until you get an abnormal mammogram…
But you’re not really worried because it’s just some vague little thing that they just want to re-image. And you get your re-imaging, and they still want more images. So you have more images done, just to be cautious. Guess what? Now it’s time for a biopsy of this stupid little thing.
And Fate laughs at me. You thought you could be happy? You thought your life would end up any other way but miserable? Who the hell do you think you are?
Fate laughed and I cried…until I read your comments and did something very important. I GOT A FUCKING GRIP!
So I’m now back to being angry but sane. This isn’t punishment or Fate trying to restore the cosmic miserableness to my life. This is just another freaking bump in the road. Happy, peaceful and content are still my buddies. Life has not turned on its head just yet.
The biopsy will be at 7 AM on Friday morning and what will be will be.
Denial Ain’t Working No More
here’s been something that has been going on with me medically for a couple of months now. I haven’t blogged about it or mentioned it before because I was employing my usual method of dealing with issues I don’t feel like addressing: denial. Until today it’s been working.
It started with my mammogram back in early May. I hadn’t had one since 2006 (or was it 2005?) so I was overdue. The tech told me as she got me ready that they had switched to digital mammography in the intervening years. Since digital was so much clearer, she told me not to be surprised if I received a call to come back for some follow-up images. It seems to happen pretty often, she advised.
So I wasn’t too surprised when a week later I received a letter telling me to come in for a follow-up mammogram and possibly an ultrasound. I was most miffed about making the trek to radiology again for more breast squishing.
But like a good patient I have the follow-up images. I’m waiting in the waiting room when the tech tells me that he (the radiologist) sees something really small along the chest wall behind my right breast. He thinks I should go ahead and have the ultrasound. Fine, I roll my eyes, just feeling that we are just delaying the inevitable result that this is nothing. I have the ultrasound. The tech tells me that there is a tiny little thing that looks like a lymph node that really don’t seem very worrisome. She goes out to talk to the radiologist. I’m waiting for the, “OK, it’s nothing, you can go home” words. She returns and instead says, “Well, in light of your family history (my sister had breast cancer), he wants you to have a breast MRI.”
At that point, I’m just through. This is ridiculous. I have nothing truly indicative of breast cancer. No real lesions, no calcifications, just a tiny area that they wouldn’t even give a second thought about if not for my sister’s history. (And FWIW’s, she is my half-sister. Her father is my stepfather. We have no history of breast cancer in any other member of my family including my father’s side of the family.) I decide that I’m not doing anything else without talking to Sam, my favorite doc in the whole world.
Sam, herself a breast cancer survivor, listens to me go on about this foolishness, and decides to send me to Dr. Dahlia, the breast surgeon who thinks like an internist. She trusts her. OK, fine. I’ll see what she says.
I go to see Dr. Dahlia who is not overly concerned about this area seen on the mammogram. It is not palpable. She thinks that it probably is a lymph node, especially since I was nursing (they grow with nursing). But she wants me to get the breast MRI. Sigh. When is someone going to tell me that this is just over? Yeah, so they’re all being careful and shit, but come on! When is it going to stop? Are they going to decide to just take my breast off because they’re not sure what it is and they want to be careful? But Dr. Dahlia thinks that the breast MRI should be the definitive test.
I get stuck in a metal tube for 40 minutes. As a present, they give me a DVD of my breast MRI. I wait a week for results. I hear nothing. The next week Dr. Dahlia calls. The MRI was read as negative. Great, so all this can come to an end, I think. But they didn’t read it with together with the mammogram. And she wants the guy who read the mammogram to read the MRI. He’s on vacation until next week. Shit! This just will not end!!! She’ll call me back with the final reading.
I waited another week…then another. Nothing. Interestingly last weekend I receive a mailing with both mammograms and my breast ultrasound films. No note. No explanation as to why these were sent to me. Just the films. I put them aside. My denial was still working.
Today Dr. Dahlia called me. Again I waited for the “all clear” words. Again they didn’t come.
“Well, he (the radiologist) is not sure and thinks we should do a core needle biopsy.”
“Oh come on!” I exclaimed. “This is just too much. This is nothing. Do you really think that we should do all this?”
“I think it would give us an answer,” she replied.
“Fine,” I said, seething.
And then I hung up the phone and decided that I had had enough. This is ridiculous. This is all CYA medicine. I’m getting off this rollercoaster. I’ll call her back and tell her that I’ll just have a follow up mammogram or MRI in 6 months. Whatever this is will either have progressed or stayed exactly the same. There is no reason to keep going with this drama.
I called AdoringHusband first. And in true caretaker fashion, he agreed with me, and said that we should call Sam and have her speak to the radiologist before we go anything further. And then I did something sensible. I called my aunt (who is also a gynecologist).
When I told her that I had decided to forgo the biopsy, the first words out of her mouth were, “OK, you’ve gone and lost your natural mind.”
I tried to explain to her why my plan seemed reasonable and how they were making a big deal about nothing, and Auntie M cut me off and began to tell me about myself in a way that would have done my mother proud.
“If it was just you and the cats, you could take your time and be crazy like that, but you’ve got Z and there is no time for crazy-acting. You need to know what’s going on. If it IS something, you’ve got to deal with it NOW, not 6 months from now. You’ve got to do whatever it takes to be in the best health you can FOR HER.
You can be scared. You can be anxious. You can be anything you want. But you better have that damn biopsy!”
I sheepishly called Dr. Dahlia’s office and told her to go ahead with scheduling the biopsy. But today, my friends, my denial just ain’t working no more. And I can’t stop crying.
I know that it should be OK. But what if I’m wrong?
Godzilla Destroys Tokyo: The Zizi Version
hen I was a kid, I loved me some Godzilla movies. Godzilla, Rodan, Monster Zero…I’d watch them all again and again. Well who woulda thunk it that we’d end up with a little version of Godzilla living in our home?
Sure, she’s smaller and much, much, cuter, but the walk (and the path of destruction she leaves) is very much the same.
It seems so sudden, but we have a toddling, food extruding, ignoring-her-mommy-Daddoo-loving person wandering around. Where is my little baby? Aw man!
I know you don’t want to hear me ramble on. Let me show you some new pictures:
I love corn:
Mommy I need an iPhone:
Don’t bother me, I’m reading:
Swimming with Daddoo:
Let me interrupt this photofest for one little bit of news. The last minute adults in this family managed to plan a vacation for this year. It still counts as a summer vacation if we leave on September 19th, right?
We’re going to…Portugal! Club Med has a family (and baby) friendly resort in Albufeira called Da Balaia. Spa treatments, green wine, and Baby Club Med. Sounds like paradise to me!
And I will leave you with The Saddest School Picture Ever. I don’t know what the school photographer did to my child that made her convinced she was about to be eaten, but this picture was the best of the lot:
You Know Your Feet Are Bad When
ou know your feet are bad when…
- the young woman giving you your Red Door pedicure looks like she needs to be resuscitated after she finishes working on your crusty feet
- the woman in the next chair whose pedicure started at the same time was long gone before you even got to the polishing stage
- it is strongly suggested by the technicians that you purchase this anti crusty foot product:
AND this anti-crusty foot product:
Ah well. I hope my tip made up for the foot crustiness.
I’m off to Carol’s Daughter to buy some more Shea and Sage foot butter.
Protected: Where’d That Come From?
Obnoxious, That’s Me
can’t say that I mean to be obnoxious. Honestly, 99% of the time, I’m not really obnoxious. Yes I can be pedantic, but I try hard not to be obnoxious. However, the other day, I found myself torn between being obnoxious or not passing on relevant (to my mind) information. Obnoxious won out.
I pulled into the parking lot at Zizi’s day care center and saw a dad taking his infant daughter out of a car seat in the back of his extended cab pickup truck.
I immediately had flashbacks to almost a decade ago when my colleague, Flaura Winston, began doing her research on pediatric traffic injury. One of her first major papers was describing how dangerous it was for kids seated in the rear of compact extended cab pickup trucks during collisions. According to this study, children in the rear seat of compact extended-cab pickups are nearly five times as likely to be injured as children seated in the back seat of other vehicles.
So I’m thinking to myself, does this dad know this? Should I tell him or should I just shut the fuck up? If I come up to him out of the blue, then I’m some obnoxious as fuck parent getting all up in his Kool-aid. Yet, if I say nothing, then I feel guilty wondering whether he knows that his vehicle choice is very risky for his little daughter. And what if he gets into an accident? Would he rather have known about the risk? I’m sure that the person who sold him the truck didn’t share that bit of information. What to do, what to do?
In the end, I opted for obnoxious. I came up to him as we were both walking back to our cars upon exiting the center.
“Sir,” I began, “let me apologize in advance if anything I say seems really obnoxious because I don’t mean for it to be. But my name is Liana and I’m a pediatrician. I used to work at CHOP with one of the researchers who did most of the recent work on child traffic injury prevention. And what I remember really well was her study that showed how dangerous extended cab trucks were for kids, even when they were in car seats. They were much more likely to get hurt or killed than in similar crashes in other cars.”
By now he’s kinda looking at me like I’m a Jehovah’s Witness coming to spread the word.
“Well I need this truck for work,” he explained.
“Absolutely,” I nodded, trying so hard not to appear to be a lunatic. “I wasn’t telling you this to make you go out and sell your truck. No, no no. I just didn’t know if you knew about the higher risk and I thought it might be good for you to just have the information. When I was in practice, I always believed in giving parents information so that they could make the best decisions for their families. That’s all I wanted to do here. Again, I’m sorry if I seemed rude or obnoxious. Have a good day.”
He watched me walk away with a weird look on his face. It wasn’t anger, but it certainly wasn’t happiness that I stopped to share that little tidbit of information with him either. I drove away feeling alternately like I hadn’t done anything wrong and like I was the biggest jerk on the face of the planet. In the end, I don’t think I did anything irretrievable, but I’m not sure I made the right choice.
When I run the situation through the Liana filter, the question becomes, if I were driving a car that is risky to my child in an accident would I want to know? Simple answer: yes. But the more complicated question is who would I want to be the one to tell me? My pediatrician wouldn’t tell me because s/he doesn’t even know what type of car I drive. My friends/family probably wouldn’t know about the risks unless it was featured on Eyewitness News. So is it OK that a random stranger with special knowledge comes and gives me this information? Or is it just plain obnoxious?
Entrelac for Me, Entrelac for You
bout two weeks ago, I promised a post about entrelac, and now I’m about to get to it. But first, I have to ask a completely unrelated question. Why oh why do these tiny little shoes have to cost $50?
Yes, they’re cute and they’re Umi, but good god, after Labor Day she’s never going to be able to wear them again! Do they really need to cost $50? Alas, when your daughter has narrow little feet, Stride Rite will not do.
OK, now back to the matter at hand: entrelac.
As most of you know, I’ve been knitting for a very long time. And unlike some knitters, who shall remain nameless, Monica, that prefer to stay in the comfort zone skillwise, I’ve always been one who likes to push the envelope. When I started knitting, I went from a headband, to a scarf, to this sweater: 
So, no, I don’t shy away from challenges.
I tackled cable and seed stitch sweaters:
Complicated patterns:
and even socks:
There really wasn’t much that daunted me…except entrelac.
Back when I was at my old job, I decided to do something fun and I started a knitting group. I promised that I could have anyone knitting within 10 minutes! It was great. New knitters were created. Beginners and intermediate knitters challenged themselves with new skills. And the experienced knitters had fun chatting and futzing about on their cool projects. And then one day, one of the members comes in with an entrelac pattern, looking to me for help getting started. I was forced to admit that entrelac was beyond me. It was the one thing that I just couldn’t do! I was so ashamed.
The good news was that Sharon, another experienced knitter, chose not to be intimidated by entrelac and ended up helping the woman get going with her project. But me, instead of trying to learn, I did one of my mother’s numbers and just decided that entrelac was too hard and I would never get it. I gave up without much of a fight.
But look at it. It looks hard, doesn’t it?
And look at all these pictures here: Entrelac photos
Yet, as I was to discover, entrelac was one of those things that looked much more complicated than it actually was…like cable knitting. How did I learn this? I finally broke down and took a class at The Tangled Web, my favorite IRL yarn store. As I sat there being my usual type-A Annie that Saturday morning, I finally realized that entrelac is really about following the pattern to make and join triangles and rectangles. It really isn’t that deep. Good lord, I was tripping over this?
So I went and ordered my yarn to take part in the Entrelac Market Bag Knit-Along. Piece of cake, I thought. No big deal. And then I accidentally screwed up. It wasn’t a that was totally FUBAR type of screw up, but it did necessitate a major frogging*. The good news is that I was able to find some help from the peeps in the Everything Entrelac forum on Ravelry, my new hangout. I was picking up stitches wrong (for entrelac) on the purl side. Now things look just fine:
It’s coming along.
Anyone want to join me in an online knit-along? I’ll get you the pattern and we can get our entrelac on over the next few weeks. Here’s a gallery of what the bag looks like when finished and felted: Market Square Bags gallery (Unfortunately I’m going to have to find someone with a top-loading washer for felting my bag since you can’t felt in a front-loader, I’ve discovered.)
Here are some great online resources for learning entrelac: All Aboard the Entrelac Express
Entrelac Scarf Tutorial
Red Thread’s Entrelac Tutorial
I will end with another digression, albeit one quasi-knitting related. Aren’t these cupcakes cool?
They were featured here: Knit Night Cupcakes
I’ve Been Tagged
oodness it has been so long since I’ve been tagged for a meme, I don’t even remember how it goes! But thanks to my friend, Deathstar, for her tag, you’re it. Let me see if I can jog my little memory engrams.
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
Working like a natural dog as a teendoc attempting to save the world, and, if my memory is correct, dating Big Head Fred, a man with a head so huge, it could, in fact, blot out the sun. I also was into cycling and often had humorous adventures like the time I blew a tire 5 miles away from home at sunset and had no wallet, no phone and was out in the middle of nowhere. So I had to wheel the bike halfway until the tire got stuck and then I had to carry the bike for the next 2 miles in the dark on the side of the road wearing bike shoes until I got home. (I think Big Head Fred was out of the picture by then.)
2. What 5 things are on your to-do list for today?
Oh this is exciting! Label Zizi’s new sippy cups for daycare. Finish (start) my presentation that I have to give Tuesday in San Diego. Transplant the carrots and broccoli from the peat starter cups to the garden patch. Wash and twist my locs. Change the linen on the bed.
Yeah, I know that you are all so overwhelmed with the wild life that I lead.
3. List some snacks you enjoy.
This is a pretty random meme. Hmm. Snacks. Do pomegranate martinis count as snacks? I guess not. OK. Salt and pepper Orville Redenbacher microwave popcorn, white chocolate, wasabi almonds, vanilla sandwich cookies, peanut butter M&Ms, Necco Wafers and those conversation hearts you see around Valentine’s Day.
4. What would you do with a billion dollars?
After paying off my debts and buying a bigger house, I would establish a foundation like Bill and Melinda Gates to combat poverty and need in this country. And because I believe in education, it would also have a component that would provide scholarships for private schools.
5. List the places you have lived.
Washington, DC, Bronx, NY, Los Angeles, CA, New Haven, CT, Silver Spring, MD, Greenbelt, MD, Mount Laurel, NJ, Pennsylvania
6. List the jobs you have had.
File clerk, clerk typist, receptionist, data entry clerk, research assistant, freelance writer, resident physician, attending physician, medical director, go-go dancer (OK, just kidding with that last one)
Not a very interesting list, is it? It’s just that I knew early on that I never wanted to do anything that directly involved people and food and/or money. No service jobs. Put me in a nice air conditioned office. The pay was better and there was a lot less drama.
One summer I decided to work at the phone company. I went and took the test. Everyone was like, “Oh that was so hard!” and I was like, puleeze! When I had my interview to go over the test results, the guy was like, “you passed.” And I’m like, “Yes.” He somehow seemed like he wanted me to act like I did a year before when I got my Yale acceptance letter. I told him that I wanted to be an operator, but he made me…a file clerk. And after a few days of getting dirty and dusty with filing, I decided to dress down a bit. I wore a Yale t-shirt and jeans. As I walked in, one woman laughed at me, “You didn’t graduate from there?!” she guffawed pointing at my shirt.
I looked at her completely deadpanned, “No, I just finished my freshman year, but I will graduate in 3 years.”
The look on her face was priceless. It was like, Oh shit! How do I get out of this one? “Well I didn’t mean….I wasn’t trying to say…I mean…Well do you think you can get me a t-shirt when you go back?”
“Sure thing,” I promised.
The nice thing about my summer jobs are that they kept me really focused about finishing school and going on to med school.
So now I’m supposed to tag 3 other people. How about Millie from Out, Damned Egg, Sylvie from Chronicles of Mommyhood and Julie from Tales from the Stirrups. You guys are up!
And Happy Fathers’ Day to the dads out there!
Man Cold & How Weird Is My Husband
Man Cold
OK, this is too freaking funny.
AdoringHusband says that I should recognize the superior importance of the Man Cold. I’m sorry but men are too too much!
Yeah, I know I should go back to blogging about something meaningful, but between my colonscopy (negative), my upcoming breast MRI (after a very slightly abnormal mammogram) and Zara’s recent bout with fever to 105, I think that humor is about all I’m able to manage these days. Maybe I’ll do some knit blogging this week also. I’m learning entrelac.
And speaking of my dear husband, I really think that he should have been an engineer. He doesn’t think like a normal person. And no, engineers are not normal. Their brains work in unique and different ways. For example:
When I read this Dilbert on May 25th, I looked over at AdoringHusband and asked, “So how many bodies do you have hidden in the basement?”
His reply? “If they’re hidden, how would I know?”
You see, definitely not a normal answer. Hopefully Zizi will get most of her normal from Mommy.