Saturday, August 26, 2006

Deep in the Heart of Texas, Part I: The Packing

Rum and Coke is an old drink, very retro, but it certainly does the job. Little tip from a bartender: Carbonated beverages make you drunk faster. And you know that old Bill Cosby skit about different drinks making different kinds of drunks? I believe it's true. (And if you don't, shame on you. Don't you know a classic comedian when you see one?) So anyhow, tonight it was rum and Coke.

I went on a little vacation after my professional success. Was gone most of the week this week. Took my sisters to San Antonio. I went to San Antonio in the winter of 2005 because my senile Grandma C. wanted to visit her long-lost brother one last time before she died but couldn't go on her own so I was nominated to bring her down but I said I would not do so alone, so my mother came along. It was a decent time once we dropped my grandma and Maiden Aunt Etta (a pair I must describe in a posting dedicated to them alone one day) off at her brother's, but one thing I noticed right away was that there was this gorgeous Riverwalk that clearly could not be enjoyed fully unless you were in the company of fellow young-uns. I mean, there were bars and late-night restaurants and clubs and such.

So my sisters and I made a drunken pact last Christmas to take a trip together to San Antonio, and after we won, excuse me, did what we did at my job, I finally had an opportunity to fulfill the promise. Of course, this involved travelling after Homeland Security imposed the no liquids and gels rule for carry-ons, but we forged on regardless.

It did force us to check a piece of luggage, something to which I am vehemently opposed since I suspect the luggage most often lost is that with a small transfer time at the hub airport, and we had only a 45 minute transfer time on the way down (which, when you add in the 30 minute early boarding time means only 15, isn't very long). I was personally not going to check my luggage but rather buy all liquid and gel products when I arrived in Texas, but once Kristy decided to check a duffle bag, I horned in with my hair products, which are the most expensive of my liquids and gels.

And since I'm on the subject of packing, on the way back(which's [and I know that's not a real word (like my use of double and now triple parentheses)] layover was only an hour [at Atlanta, no less, which is the worst airport to have to get around in]), I decided to check a piece of luggage myself, despite my golden rule. I figured if it got lost, I'd already be home so I'd have enough supplies to make do until it turned up.

Also, I bought too much stuff while I was there, a fatal flaw I have in which I think that anything I buy on vacation is free so long as I charge it. I even had to buy a new piece of luggage in which to put all the new stuff I bought (skip the rest of this paragraph if you're a man): 2 new t shirts, one green saying "Texas" with a retro star in a square, the other brown and punk rockish saying, Hard Rock Cafe San Antonio (I know, cheesy to buy a Hard Rock t shirt but the brown with yellow crabby-looking writing convinced me it was almost cool); a tank top with the artwork of Rosie the Riveter emblazoned on the front and back (hence my new profile pic); 3 bracelets--one cuff-style with inlaid Mexican mother of pearl and onyx in a rose patter, one brass saying, "live, love, rock," and one a collection of small layered brown beaded bracelets and indigo beaded bracelets; a shot glass in the shape of a cowboy boot stating, "Don't mess with Texas"; a necklace with two strands of multi-sized emerald, turquoise, garnet, and clear beats; two boxes of Mexican jumping beans (for my niece); a small barette of onyx and mother of pearl; a box of Alamo shortbread cookies for my dad; a purple Mexican skirt for my niece; a pottery dish with a frog's head and feet at either end (I heart frogs) and another that is very artsy with purple and green coloring; two matchingly distressed posters to be framed and put on opposite sides of my couch in my future apartment of Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley; an owl magnet for my mom's birthday (she loves owls); 5 hand-crafted glass swizzle-sticks (I collect them but only glass ones); a woven pink, olive, and black blanket; a tortoise from a local San Antonio glass-blower (for myself; turtles represent feminine power and longevity); and several pairs of earrings--four black freshwater pearls on each dangling clip of silver (I only do silver, white gold, or if I were rich, platinum; not ever yellow gold), two pair handcrafted by Mexican artisans, one containing a blue sapphire-colored piece of oval glass above four separate cylanders of wood above diamond-shaped silver pieces all hung from long isosceles triangles well below the lobe; and two pieces by Jody Coyote, my favorite earring artist--one with a long silver strand curling in on itself in a snail-like fashion with two turquoise and two bronse beads along the outermost coil, and the other two inch-long chains of silver (one hanging behind and one in front of the lobe), one ending with a daisy shape centered by an onyx and the other with a long cylander of silver.

Wow, I feel dirty after actually writing all that out.

Anyway, as I was packing up my return luggage that I would check, I pondered. See, on the way down, both my sisters' luggage had gotten notices that they had been searched by the TSA. So as I packed the bag I would check on the way back, I thought about something: I bet myself that not one of our three bags would receive that TSA notice, and here's why--on the return trip, you are much, much less likely to get searched and here's why: 1. A suicide bomber wouldn't do it on the return from a trip but on the first leg; 2. (And most importantly) If I were a TSA/HS agent, I would NOT want to go through someone's dirty underwear to see if there were a bomb I was unable to pick up upon x-ray and chemical inspection.

I was spot on. None of us was searched. Though Kristy's duffle had broken straps anyway, which the airline refused to reimburse.

Friday, August 25, 2006

It's All Good

I wish I could be more verbose about this but there's no other way to put it . . . everything turned out just fine! :)

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Cancer-Dealers

Here's the thing about the lump (which, for some unnamed reason, I'd rather call a bump): I knew I had to keep it a secret. That's why it was so important to write about it here--because no one in my family could know but I needed to let it out somewhere.

No one who had to personally deal with my mother could know. Until I couldn't tell them something, I didn't realize how much I'd come to depend on each of them in the last year and a half. I confided in all of them different things, and if you added my family members all together, you came up with one complete best friend.

But I also knew that each of them just couldn't go through with me what I had to go through right now. All of them had lived through three major recurrences of my mother's own cancer. Each of them had come to terms with what it meant to lose my mother. Each had come to terms with the idea that maybe they didn't have to. Each was told no, the hope had been wrong. The cancer would kill her in a year. Each had heard that death sentence from many different doctors, the best in the field. So each came to terms again with the idea that she'd die. Soon. (When you're talking about the rest of someone's life, a year is soon.)

Each heard that she was in remission--remission--a word we never, never, ever expected to hear. A miracle, the doctors said. No one, especially my mom, could believe it was true. They must have gotten her files mixed up with some other patient's. She wasn't supposed to have remission. She was supposed to die.

It didn't last. By fall--9 months after our lives as cancer-dealers started--she had it again. Surgery. They removed the new lesions. 6 more months, they said. She was in remission again--a word I now recognize for its truly fickle optimism. 10 months this time, then cancer again. Surgery again. Out in time for the once-a-year family reunion.

Now who knows? 6? 9? 10 months? We'll take it, whatever it is, but it leaves a bitter taste in our throats, this new remission, because we know what is around the corner at the end of this latest purgatory, even if we don't know how far down the road this corner might be.

* * *

How could I enter into this precarious set of peaks and valleys that is my family's life the idea that I might--might--also have cancer? I couldn't. Not yet.

So I began to play a game in my head. When would I tell them? Not now, when I hadn't even confirmed if there was reason to be concerned. What about if they decided to do a mammogram? No. What about if they saw something on it and decided to do a biopsy? No. What if the biopsy was positive and we needed to consider treatment options?

. . . Probably not. If I had a mastectomy? Well, I couldn't hide that. But probably the best thing to do would be to wait. Tell them after when things would be done, when things would be okay or not okay but when I'd know, or when they'd know.

I understand now, see. I know what it is to worry, to await each test, each doctor's visit, each surgery. I know what it is to measure your life in hospital visits. It's horrible enough to undergo that waiting for one you love. To undergo that for two you love? Unbearable. I mean it. Just . . . unbearable.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Happiness Hangover

It's been a week since I had what had to be the best day of my life so far. I worked really hard all summer on something and it came to fruition. I never thought when I started this job that we'd actually pull off what we did. I wish I could share the details here but my job comes with a no blogging rule, so I really can't talk about it. Let's just say that I experienced a huge victory and now have employment for another three months. (And with any luck, we'll end up changing the country in the process.)

I had to put the lump out of my mind from the day I found it until the end of last week, or I never would have made it through several 18 and 20 hour days in the beginning of the week. I did. I didn't tell anyone, except for a couple of people who read it here, of course, and contacted me. I promptly told them to call me in a few days; I just couldn't even think about it.

I succeeded very well in not thinking about it. It's easy for me to not remember something I'd rather forget. I succeeded so well that I forgot to call the doctor for 3 days after I could have. Oh, but what glorious days they were. There was the celebration that went to all hours of the night, ending with about 7 people crashing in my hotel room; there was getting to sleep away half of the next day after weeks of nothing but late nights and early mornings, weekends included. There was the flood of emails and phone calls congratulating me and wishing me luck. I had a happiness hangover for 3 days.

Then it wore off.

Saturday, August 05, 2006

I Never Did

In high school there was a day in health class where all the girls were separated from all the guys, and they spoke to us about our Bodies. They explained the changes of puberty and the important things we'd have to do from now on for our health. One was, of course, doing monthly self-breast exams. There was a video to demonstrate. There were pictures on a flyer. There was a fake rubber breast with a nipple that wasn't colored differently from the rest of the rubber. (Guess they wanted it to be realistic but not too realistic.) Do it every month, they reminded us.

I didn't do it.

There was a big push on one of the local news stations a couple of years later to do monthly self-breast exams. My mom got all into it, and even got this hanger that went on the shower nozzle with pictures and instructions so you'd remember and know how to do it. She asked me if I was doing it and I said yes.

I didn't do it.

I go to the gynecologist yearly. She asks me every year if I perform self-exams and I say I do.

I never have.

My mom got cancer. Not breast, but still she got cancer. Now I thought I should be even more aware of such things and said to myself, I should start those monthly self-exams. I thought about the people in my family--both my mom's and dad's side--that have had cancer. I really should do it, I told myself.

I never did.

Tonight for some reason, over 10 years after I was first told to do it, I did it.

There's a lump.