Cancer realities…

 

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Cancer is scary — duh…

What’s also scary is paying for it — I’m lucky that I have a job with good insurance and a low annual out of pocket maximum — but, other folks aren’t so luck.

Today Andy and I were talking about my cancer care… my surgery poliday is coming up — so, three years ago today I still had two boobs — and I knew one of them was trying to kill me.

My experience with cancer has changed the way I look at life and the world in general — for example –

• They told me I had cancer over the phone.  There was no “we can’t give you the test results, you need to come in to the office” drama — nope, it was “there’s cancer in your biopsy — if you can be in Woodbury at noon, you can see an excellent surgeon” -wow… I’m typing this from the office where I took that phone call.  The memory is strong.
• Being diagnosed with cancer is a long process — first, they detect it and they can tell how aggressive it is.  Mine was super aggressive.  It takes much longer to know the extent of the problem.  You get that news from your oncologist.  They do a variety of tests on you before and immediately after surgery — then the oncologist looks at all the information and formulates a treatment plan.
• Cancer is expensive — very expensive.  My medical bill from May to December in my cancer year would have been something like $500,000 “retail” — my insurance company paid out about $250,000 in that year alone.
• The first person you talk to at the cancer clinic is the business office — before you see a doctor or a nurse, before they weigh you or any medical professional talks to  you — you explain to the cancer clinic how you’re planning to pay for their services.  Mine was easy — they’d looked up my insurance, saw that my company pays for stuff and it was a quick meeting.  I asked what would happen if I didn’t have good insurance?  The answer was, in effect, we’d ask you about other assets — a house, savings etc.  Yep — paying for treatment may have meant taking out a second mortgage on a house I don’t own..
• Cancer treatment comes with “education” — I had a class on chemo, taught by a great chemo nurse.  They talk about the side effects… all of them.  Then at your first appointment with the doctor, the doctor’s nurse tells you about the side effects — then the doctor tells you about them.  Each portion of this “education” takes about an hour… by the time  you’re done, you’re really freaked out.
• You probably won’t  get most of the side effects — and you don’t lose your hair with every kind of chemo.
• If you like avocados – eat lots of them while your taste is more sensitive… just trust me on that one… you won’t regret it!
• “Chemo” isn’t a standard medication.  Instead, they look at your kind of cancer and proscribe a mixture of drugs to fight your cancer.  They also proscribe a mixture of drugs to reduce the side effects, both in the clinic and when you go home.
• Getting your chemo takes a while in the clinic.  They hook you up and the medication drips into you over the course of a few hours.  This is when you come to love the chemo nurses — they keep an eye on you to make sure you’re comfortable.  They bring you snacks and ask you about your life — They also know their patients well, so if the doctor writes down something that seems unusual to them, they’ll check it out before they give you the drug.
• While you’re sitting in the chemo chair, other patients will probably be right next to you — sometimes with family, sometimes not.  Often they take a nap, read or watch TV — and if you’re lucky, you’ll have a chemo buddy or two.  My favorite chemo buddy was an older woman with the same diagnosis as me… she was further along on the path, so she could tell me about her experiences and I had a first-hand account of what would probably happen.
• A good chemo clinic will have lots of resources for their patients — emotional and financial support, a nutritionist and other folks to help you adjust to your new body image.  This is part of the general idea that cancer patients are people and their whole lives are important to their cancer recovery.
• A good oncologist is one who is interested in the patient’s whole life — mine is awesome.  When we have an appointment, we talk about life, what’s going on in both of our home lives and what we’d like to accomplish in the future.  Mine celebrated with me when I completed my Ph.D — and he was genuinely happy for me in the way that a relative or close friend would be… He’s also my primary medical resource for other things — because I trust him to give me good advice.
• Having a good support system at home and work is essential, both during treatment and afterward.  Having a few close friends and family who will take you to treatment, cook you bland food, cut up your avocados and generally make sure you’re doing ok makes life much better.
• Cancer is scary — but it’s not the end of your life as you know it.  It’s kind of like taking a long detour into a bad neighborhood — if you have a good team in your car, you can make it out the other side with a lot of life lessons about how other folks live.  You may end up on a different life trajectory on the other side, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad one.  It’s just different.
• Living as a cancer patient in “observation” stage means that you are much more aware of the problems other folks may have.  You learn to have compassion for yourself and others — not to take life so seriously and generally to enjoy the people you love that much more.

In the end, I can never say that I’m glad I had cancer.  I can say that I learned a lot from the experience, that I’d like to have my left boob back (provide it wouldn’t try to kill me) and that I like my post-cancer life as much or probably more than my pre-cancer life.  Like many enriching life experiences, cancer isn’t an easy way to learn these lessons — but, it’s the path I ended up on and I’m happy to be on the other side.

Memorial Day…

I spend a lot of my professional life thinking about the ethics of killing in war… in fact, in about two weeks, I’ll celebrate “Dr.Patty” day — the day I defended my dissertation on the ethics of warfare.

As you might expect, I have some pretty specific and well-informed opinions on the wars, soldiers dying for our freedom etc… Add to that my time as a military spouse, and you might say that most of my adult life appreciating what other folks only pause to appreciate on Memorial Day.

Add to that my father and his father being buried at Ft. Snelling — and you could say that I’m as aware of folks making sacrifices for their country as I am of breast cancer…

So — I didn’t think about it this weekend…

Instead I took photos of flowers with Andy and Max…

and took photos of a kick-ass sunrise… even though we had to leave Isabella in the middle of the night to get there…

and today I was lucky to be included in a Smith family party near Lake Calhoun..

So — this weekend I went from Flathorn to Lake Calhoun…  and loved every minute of it.

I’ll think about war tomorrow.

The Dildo story

Ok this is just a pretty picture, has nothing to do with my story.

So I have this friend, for obvious reasons we shall call her “M”.

M was moving and needed the help of her mother to get the various schnick-scnack squared away in her new apartment.

The first thing they brought in were the Ferret cages…………M is  a unique soul and having weird animal friends is just one of the things I like about her.

So the work continued and various boxes and personal effects were brought in along with furniture and clothing etc etc…..

Being a hot summer day they finally decided to crank up the air conditioning and have a sit and catch up………….the Ferrets would need to run around the new territory to get used to things.

The older and wiser of the two Ferrets took leave for a few minutes and returned  dragging a thick,  12″   sparkly purple dildo, which he laid at mom’s feet…………….AKWARD!

Feminism is as Feminism does..

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It seems that Andy has a fundamental objection to feminism.

The thing is, at least as I see it, feminism isn’t about putting one gender above another — but rather achieving equality — and objecting to gender or race based discrimination of any sort.

Third wave feminists don’t generally hate men — in fact, we realize that one of our obligations is raising good men.  Further, we appreciate the men in our lives who are good people — and especially those who are good fathers to their kids… and especially their boys.

I see Andy raising Max to be a good person, respectful of all persons and generally kind and accepting of the differences among people.  These are important and attractive qualities to third-wave feminists.

I also know that Andy thinks women should be free to choose what to do with their own bodies — and, although he makes jokes and says things that (if he were serious I’d never be the best friend ever with him… ) I know that when he’s serious he’s all about sexual freedom for both genders.

These, folks — seem to me like third-wave feminist values…. whether he wants to be part of the movement or not is up to him — but, I think he’s doing something more important than marching in a Pride Parade — he’s living the values feminism would have everyone live…. and, perhaps most important he’s teaching these values to Max.

To all those out there is think Im a feminist of any wave………

To be any kind of a Feminist would be to say there is the possibility of Maleism. I think that would be looked on differently?

If we say Black pride, it’s really saying something different then White pride!?

The primary antagonist in this conversation, said to me last week……….referring to a conversation about why some Native American’s seem angry  “I understand why they are angry, but I had nothing to do with it.”

The fact is, only a Native American can decide how he or she should feel.

My “roll” is really about being decent to each other, boy………girl……..brown………..yellow………white…………black.   To live and think like I think Jesus, Budah, Mohammed etc etc would have  wanted us to…………..not like how folks have interpreted those ideas.

I have my issues……..I’m prone to stereo types and quick judgments against certain segments of the population (rich republicans), but I think trying every day to become more accepting is religion enough for me.

As for Feminism………..I can be a bit of a pig when it comes to sexuality and what I like about girls…………I’m just as apt to tell a joke about a piggy man……..and it’s usually about myself.

I’m in love…

… with a DSLR… that’s a camera, not something dirty .

I took this — with Andy’s instruction…. but, I took it…

I also took this one all on my own…

It’s gonna be a fun summer!

Ummmmm

Patty I see your “third wave feminism” and raise you a shit sandwich.

I have worked hard in my life to avoid as many ists and isms as I can.

A funny sign…..

So I was out doing my thing this morning, taking snaps, when I ran across an interesting billboard.

There was a picture of a plump happy baby wearing nothing but a diaper and his dads tie. The tag line read: ” I’m the C.E.O. of my house”

And at the bottom was the logo from the pro-life people.

Very clever are these Redneckerites……..

A) We want more “consumers in training” around to feed our lust for consumption?

B) We want those unwanted babies so we can execute them when they grow up in a life of crime and abuse?

While Wall street is selling America a bill of goods it cant afford and reporting record compensation, I wonder what Americans would choose to do with “little C.E.O” Bernie Madoff in his cute tie and diaper?

Look out Isabella….

We can order these from Skymall…. seriously.  I found out thanks to this awesome blog!!

Now — if only someone would give me $1,000 for each one, we’d be set!

Cougars and Feminism…

… and we’re not talkin about the feline kind…

From Urban dictionary…Cougar 

An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man. The cougar can be anyone from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie or milf. Cougars are gaining in popularity — particularly the true hotties — as young men find not only a sexual high, but many times a chick with her shit together.

That cougar I met last night, showed me shit I didn’t know existed, I’m goin back for more.

In the media, the term “cougar” is often used in a pejorative way…

It seems to me that the goal is to control an adult woman’s sexuality… by giving this group of women a label — and not a generally positive one like “pretty” or “smart” — the goal seems to be to discourage the behavior — or to disparage the people who make the choice.

To me — it’s a label similar to “slut” or “whore”.  Women who like sex often get these kinds of labels… and in this instance it’s a case of the women who are attracted to — and attractive to — younger men who get the label.

Notice — there isn’t a label for men who like to have sex with younger women (of legal age…) — they’re admired and have shows dedicated to them..

Just like there isn’t a label for guys who like sex…. (maybe because it’s assumed that all guys like sex — a lot) -the term “man” needs to modify the term “slut” or “whore”… when the man likes to have sex with lots of women.

I’ll readily admit that women want to control the sexuality of other women, probably more often than men do — so they contribute to the process of shaming the label — to be honest, some of the most sexist and derogatory things I’ve ever heard said about womens’ sexuality have come from female mouths.

I’ve also known some very sexually liberated men -men who think that women should make their sexual choices with the same freedom that men have.  and those men I’d like to think are liberated and possibly third-wave feminists — even if they don’t want to admit it…. (Andy, I’m lookin at you ).

I know that not all people think the actions of “cougars” are bad –

If it were the case that the general society accepted the choices of women to date younger guys, a label wouldn’t be necessary… that’s all I’m sayin..

Of course, recent discussions have led to amusing variations on the phrase “trying to control female sexuality” — my favorite was “I’m not trying to put my foot in your feminist baby maker”…. which needed some translation — but, it works for me… I’d rather not have anybody’s foot in there .