Mama mia, Beelzebub and the devil

I saw this on Inside Edition last night and the damn song's been stuck in my head ever since.

Quote of the day

Yes, my gay son was known in our family for bringing me flowers on my birthday and Mother’s Day. He also was known for careening down the rugby pitch, and, on the morning of September 11, 2001, for charging unarmed down the aisle of a doomed Boeing 757 to face knife-wielding Islamist thugs in a hijacked cockpit.

No one among his pick-up team of fellow passengers was asking 'Are you straight? Are you gay?' No one doubted that a guy who weighed 220 and stood 6’4” tall -- who could run over a charging opponent on the field, and ran with the bulls in Pamplona earlier that summer -- would be an asset to a desperate group trying to overcome a threat onboard an airliner.

The world has its share of strong, heroic gay men. Gay men in sports uniforms and military uniforms have been winning America’s games and fighting America’s battles for a long time: quietly, humbly, and in the face of vicious bigotry.

- Alice Hoagland, in response to Carson Daly's joke that gay people wouldn't have been able to take down the Jet Blue pilot who freaked out earlier this week. Hoagland's son Mark Bingham was one of the heroes aboard Flight 93.

This makes me horny

I have no logical explanation for that reaction. It's just the fact.

Thought for the day

Dear Geraldo,

Hoodies don't kill people. Idiots with guns kill people.

Signed,

Everyone

I should be happy

Three days ago, I found out that the hinky thing that showed up on my CT scan that could have been metastasis wasn't. So I should be celebrating, right?

But it seems like it's just been one thing after another pissing me off all week. I haven't been sleeping well in like forever, but the last several days have been significantly worse. Since Sunday, I have slept a grand total of maybe 13 hours. When I did sleep, it was always in the morning, sometime between 6 a.m. and noon.

Which brings me to my first complaint of the day: By the time my brain was finally starting to simmer down enough for me to sleep, I only had an hour until my alarm went off. I was supposed to be somewhere at 9:30. So I dragged my fat ass out of bed and rushed to get ready. 9:00 the phone rings. Appointment cancelled.

My second, bigger complaint of the day: My hair LOOKS LIKE SHIT! No curl. Nothing to run my fingers through (lifelong nervous habit). The top layer, where she left about 2 inches of length, was standing up straight. Good morning, Don King.

As soon as I walked out the door of the salon yesterday, I started crying. On the way home, I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep from sobbing loud enough for other drivers to hear. Got home, went in the bathroom and tried to fluff it up. Measured to find it's only 1/2 inch long in places. I dug through my linen closet to find the curling iron I haven't used in 20 years. Confirmed my suspicions that it was too short to even try the curling iron. Continued crying.

Then I called the salon. The woman who butchered me answered. I asked to speak to the manager. She must have figured out who I was because she said, "The manager's not available." "When will she be in?" "I don't know." "Well, will you at least tell me her name." "You'll have to leave your number and she'll call you." I hung up.

A few minutes later, I called back. The other stylist answered the phone this time. "I'd like to speak to the manager." "What's this about?" "I'd like to discuss it with the manager." "We don't have a manager." "Then let me speak to the supervisor." "We don't have a supervisor."

I said I'll take it all the way to corporate if I have to and hung up. Then I called one of the other branches for the same company. A guy answered. I asked to speak to the manager. He said "[First name's] not here right now. May I take a message?" I asked if he knew the name of the manager at the other location. "Oh yeah, we have the same manager for all 3 stores. In fact, she's the owner. Is there a problem?" "I just got my hair cut at X Store and it's at least 2 or 3 inches shorter than I asked for. When I called to complain, they lied to me and said there was no manager. Two different calls, 2 different employees lied to me." He said, "Oh that's awful. I'm sorry." I ranted a little bit, he listened patiently, then gave me the full name and the phone number of the owner. Said she probably wasn't in her office but I should leave a message because he knew she'd want to hear about this.

I called, left the message with a brief summary of what happened. She called back less than 10 minutes later, apologizing profusely for the bad haircut and the bad treatment. She had already called X Store to get their side of it and apparently reamed them about lying to me.

She asked me for more details, then told me she's been getting "about one complaint a month" about butcher-woman and the complaint is always that she cut it too short, that she's been trying to work with her and get her to understand you have to make sure you know exactly how long a customer wants it before you make the first cut. She volunteered to give me my money back plus coupons for future services and apologized again saying, "I know it'll probably be a couple months for it to grow back but if you need any touch ups in the meantime, we'll take care of it." She also wants me to meet her at the store today so she can see it.

After a week's worth of worrying that my cancer was back, I feel stupid for being this upset over my hair. But every time I reach up to touch it or look in the mirror, I remember how shitty I felt when it started falling out after my first chemo, and how shitty I felt during the whole 6 months of chemo, and how shitty I felt for the first 7 or 8 months after chemo until it grew back enough for me to be happy with it.

I had a whole year of feeling shitty because of my hair. I hoped I'd never have to feel that way again. Now I've got three months to wait for it to grow back to where I want it so I can stop feeling shitty.

Last night, my friendly neighborhood bigot told me I look like a lesbian. That cheered me up a little.

Does this look like the same hair cut to you?

That's the picture I took to the hair stylist and this is what she did to me. Keep in mind, my hair is usually very thick and very curly. She cut off all the curl. Then she decided she was "going to thin it out" and started chopping huge chunks out. It's only about half an inch long in places and all the volume is gone. I wanted more like 2-3 inches, which when it curled up, would have been similar to the picture I showed her. It will take me at least 3 months to grow it out to the length I wanted.

My hair hasn't been this short since 6 months after chemo and I never wanted it to be that short again. It's never been as thinned out as it is now - except when it was falling out during chemo.

I thought that once I was through with chemo I'd never have to cry over my hair again.

I'm not in love with my cats anymore

The last week has had a lot of ups and downs. A few examples:

1) Some very good friends of mine are going through a very rough time. Major anxiety, anger and sadness in their lives. I've been trying to help them out by babysitting, which I'm happy to be able to do, but it's been stressful. I can't blog about it because it would violate their privacy and the people I would normally talk to about it are too close to the situation.

2) Last Tuesday, I found out my cancer might have spread to my bones. I've been emotional roller coaster from that.

3) Tuesday night, I had major panic attacks all night and wanted to kill myself and/or cut myself. I was also feeling very paranoid, like the cops were coming to get me or something. On Wednesday morning, I tried calling my psychiatrist. More about that in a separate post.

4) I saw the hand surgeon last Wednesday. He wants to do another steroid shot but he couldn't do it because it could have interfered with the bone scan. The last shot was the worst pain I've ever experienced and I'm not sure I want to go through that again. But my thumb has been hurting a little more every day. I keep telling myself that a few minutes of pain from the shot is better than days of pain from surgery - not to mention the possibility of complications such as nerve damage.

5) While I was at the surgeon's office, the hospital called me to do the pre-admission paperwork for the bone scan. I told them I couldn't talk right then, they put me on hold, I hung up. They called back while I was with the surgeon. Annoyed the hell out of me.

6) Bone scan on Thursday. The worst part was that I closed my eyes to try to relax on the table. When I opened my eyes, the machine had moved down so that it was just a few inches from my face. I had a panicky feeling that it was going to keep coming down and smash me. Then I imagined waking up in a coffin - like I died and my soul hadn't left my body yet.

7) My neighbor comes over to visit every single night around 10 or 11. She has a very loud voice. Extremely loud. I'm afraid it's going to disturb the other neighbors but she would not respond well if I asked her to speak more softly. She goes on and on about how bad one of her co-workers is. I'm not sure there's really anything wrong with the coworker, other than the fact that she happens to be black and has the misfortune of working with my neighbor who is a flaming racist.

8) On Wednesday, neighbor asked if I would be going shopping on Saturday (hint hint) and if I'd be going to Store-X and Store-Z (hint hint). I said I didn't know if I wanted to go anywhere that day and that I usually don't shop at those stores. She nagged me for the next 2 days until I said I'd take her. On Saturday, we were on our way home from the stores, she remarked that I didn't buy very much. All I thought was, I told you I don't like to shop at those stores - I can't afford to shop at those stores. Then she said she felt bad that I made the trip just for her. No she didn't.

9) My mom went with me to the checkup last week. She wasn't in the exam room when I talked to the doctor, but I told her what he said. That there was a possibility the cancer had metastasized to my bones. That I knew that meant it could be terminal. She blew it off. A week later, she hasn't called once. She doesn't even know that I had the bone scan already. And she doesn't know the results.

10) I called the gyn-onc's office for the results on Tuesday. They said either he or the nurse would call me back. A couple of hours went by. I started to panic that it must be bad news. The nurse would have called me if it was good news, but the doctor must want to talk to me himself because it was bad news. Nope. It was good news. No evidence of metastatic disease to the bone. I'm not going to die from cancer this month.

11) Now back to the cats. Even though I constantly worry that one or both of them has a terminal disease, and I worry what would happen to them if I died, I don't feel that attached to them. They're very affectionate but they don't show up to comfort me the way Jasmine and Percy did whenever I was down. Last night, I was having trouble sleeping. Just as I was about to drift off, Lizzie jumped on top of the bird cages and the birds panicked and woke me. I got up to take her down. Just as I was about to drift off again, she jumped up there again. Then it happened a third time. I yelled at her, she scrambled to get down, and she knocked some of my ceramic cats off the shelf. I don't know if she broke any.

Then, she and Megan went back to chasing each other through the apartment, as they had been doing off and on all night. They were just thundering across the floor and I was worried my downstairs neighbor would complain. I gave up trying to sleep and just got up. In the last 72 hours, I have slept a total of maybe 6 hours.

12) I was looking forward to seeing my psychiatrist today to try to get my meds straightened out. They called me at 7:30 a.m. to tell me he's sick. The soonest I can get in to see him is 2 weeks from now.

13) Yesterday, I discovered that someone broke both of the side mirrors on my car. The glass is fine, but they moved them around and broke the mechanism for adjusting them. All I can see out of my left mirror is the curb. When I was driving, I kept thinking someone was coming up on my left side but it was just the cars parked at the curb. All I can see out of my right mirror is myself. because it's turned toward the inside of the car. Since both mirrors are broken, I know it wasn't an accident. It happened in the parking lot where I live. It was probably the neighbor who lives below me. At least he didn't slash my tires. I know of at least 4 times when he's slashed someone's tires when he was mad at them. Of course, no one can prove it was him but it always happens within 24 hours of when he has some kind of confrontation with the slashee.

But my confrontation with him was almost a month ago, and I didn't even confront him. Loud mouth neighbor complained to the manager about slasher neighbor being drunk and fighting with other neighbors. Loud mouth told manager I was complaining too and said I wanted him evicted. Not true. Manager confronted him - manager's tires were slashed the next day. Owner said the guy could stay if he wrote a letter of apology to me. Slasher now thinks I tried to get him evicted. I expected flat tires a month ago. Now I've got broken mirrors.

Possibly because my fucking cats keep thundering across the floor right above his head at all hours of the night, and they keep waking up the birds who squawk very loudly when they're scared.

Which brings me to what motivated this post. I love my cats but I don't love-love them. My meds still aren't straightened out and I'm having mood swings. I wanted to kill them when they were running but I broke down in tears instead. I feel guilty for adopting them. I feel guilty for not wanting them. Or wanting them but wanting Percy and Jasmine more.

I'm really pissed off

So what else is new, right?

I participate on a forum for women with gyn cancers. It's a place to go for information and support. Recently, someone posted who's living in another country and she spoke about the health care system there - which is worlds better than in the U.S. because all of her treatment will be paid for. She has no worries whatsoever in that area, and her country also offers really great medical care that is at least as good as what we have in the U.S. The best specialists, no long waits for appointments, etc.

She was looking for someone from her country who had dealt with their system, and also had questions about the treatment recommendations here in the U.S., whether or not it was the same as what she was being told, etc.

I replied with info about my own experiences, then I mentioned that I'm envious of the health care system they have in western Europe, that there are so many people here in the U.S. who can't get treatment or go bankrupt because they don't have insurance.

The moderator deleted that part of my post with the note "hot topic." I didn't say anything that wasn't true, and I didn't take any political position about what I think we need to do to fix it or who I thought would do a better job of it.

The fact that they deleted my post pisses me off SO MUCH! They've done it before and I've quit posting because of it for weeks or months at a time.

There have been so many women there - probably more than half of the members - who've posted about financial problems they're having because of the medical bills - even those who DO have insurance - and all the extra stress that produces, which makes dealing with cancer 100 times worse. There have been members who delayed treatment and/or surgery until they could find a way to pay for it. Others who couldn't get the care their doctors recommended because their insurance companies refused to pay for it.

Why can't we talk about it? Why are so many people so fucking unwilling to face the reality? Our health care system is fucked up! If we can't talk about it, how are we going to fix it? There's no one who's more affected by this system than cancer patients. Don't we deserve support for the financial distress as well as the disease?

We are the only country in the western world that doesn't have universal health care for all of our citizens. And the insurance companies keep raking in millions while people suffer and die.

Best invention ever

I splurged a couple of weeks ago and bought myself a Dust Buster.

OMG. You mean I don't have to live with cat fur outlines along the walls and around the legs of furniture? You mean there's a way to capture all those downy little finch feathers that are scattered everywhere? No more tracking bird seed and kitty litter all over the apartment?

Who knew?

Note the fabric sleeve I made for the cord. Without that, Lizzie and Megan would have chewed through it by now.

Is this how I want to spend the whatever time I have left?

The last few weeks, I have been wasting hours and hours of time on this website called Pinterest. I read about it in the local paper (damn them!) and I've been hooked ever since.

You can find pictures of just about anything there, but the stuff I like the most are vintage items from the 1930s-1970s. It's all the stuff my grandmas and great grandmas and mom had when I was growing up. Some of the things were passed on to me and I still have them, and other items were in my possession for awhile and I sold them. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to sell anything again because I wish I had kept everything.

The vast majority of the stuff I remember has gone on to that great garbage dump in the sky.

Anyway, I joined the website and I've been pinning pictures of some of the stuff I remember. I'm becoming obsessive about it. It's like I'm desperately trying to preserve my memories so there'll still be out there in the net-iverse when I'm gone.

The picture above is a Skooter doll. I had one, same bikini and all, but mine had red hair. I also had a Skipper doll.

Maybe facing a possible cancer death sentence isn't so bad

At least I won the "Caption This" contest.

PS: Harvey Weinstein brought his Real Doll to the White House.

Metastasis

On Tuesday, I had my four-month checkup with my gyn-oncologist. My exam was fine - everything appeared normal - but he informed me that the CT scan I had a couple of months ago showed that my tailbone is larger than it was when I had my last CT, about 1.5 years earlier.

He said that endometrial cancer doesn't usually spread to the tailbone but he wants me to have a bone scan. Apparently, they inject you with a dye then you have to wait 3-5 hours before they do the scan. Oh joy.

The oncologist who did my radiation treatments told me that I should have a PET scan - that was right after I finished treatment, in December 2010. The gyn-oncologist didn't feel it was necessary so I didn't get one. But from what I read tonight, it looks like a PET might be better than a bone scan to find out if my cancer has metastasized. I'm thinking about calling the rad-onc today.

I have a lot of pain in my tailbone but that's nothing new. I fell down a flight of steps about 30 years ago and broke it and I've had chronic pain ever since. It's always worse if I spend a lot of time sitting, and I've been sitting a lot the last several months. My tailbone hurts pretty much continuously.

If the cancer has spread to my bones, it's terminal. The only treatment they can give at that point is for pain relief. And cancer in the bones is very, very painful.

Maybe those voices telling me I'm going to die soon weren't hallucinations after all.

It's an hour worse than I thought

I've been really depressed for several months so my psychiatrist increased the dose on my Wellbutrin. That resulted in paranoia, hallucinations and anxiety so he took me off it completely. I've now been without any anti-depressants for a week and all I want to do is stay in bed.

Today I didn't get up until 2:30. The cats were starving and the birds were fighting. I just wanted to go back to bed but I tended to all the animals. Then I checked my cell phone and found that I had missed an important call. The strange thing was, it was only 2:55 p.m. but the call had come at 3:53 p.m. It was like I was looking into the future.

Or perhaps I forgot to set my clocks forward last night.

My obsession, part 2

More of my ceramic cat collection. The top picture represents an investment of less than $100. The shelf was free but I spent 99¢ on a can of spray paint. Except for the top shelf, they're all planters and vases. The top shelf, left to right, is a metal memo holder, a tape dispenser, a white letter holder, a black memo & pencil holder, red bookends, a pencil sharpener and black bookends.

The white memo holder says "I'm not a fast typist, I'm not a slow typist, I'm a half-fast typist."

The picture on the bottom shows a black and white mama with her kittens, and it's unmarked. They're probably the second most expensive ceramic figurines I ever bought, at a whopping $5.50.

The middle picture is a Lefton vase on the left and an Enesco vase on the right, two of my very favorites, both purchased at Goodwill for $1.50 and 50¢ respectively.

If there was a fire and I had time to grab a few things, Lizzie and Megan would be first, my purse second, then my computer (I really need to get my documents copied onto a thumb drive so I'd only have to grab that), then the quilt that's hanging on the wall next to my door, and then that Lefton vase.

Sorry, finches, but I figure the smoke would probably kill you before I could get you out. But I'd try to save you after my Lefton. (I'll probably going to hell for that.)

My obsession

This is part of my ceramic cat collection. The top picture represents a total investment of less than $70, including the shelf. Part of the fun was being able to find them so cheap, mostly at thrift stores and flea markets. The vast majority of them were made in Japan.

The second picture is one of the first ones I bought and also one of the most expensive. I got it at a weekend flea market at the former Marina Inn convention center in South Sioux City, NE, probably 20 years ago. I paid $7 for it and my mom thought I was crazy.

The third picture has a Lefton on the left - I paid $2 for it - and the one on the right is unmarked. It cost 50¢, both from Goodwill. Lefton cats are probably my favorites.

The fourth picture is Norleans. I think it was 50¢ at Goodwill.

I've always had a thing for orange tabbies. When I was about 3-4, we had were a series of orange tiger kittens that all got hit by cars or were eaten by the neighbors' dog. We lived on an acreage on a busy highway at the edge of a small town in Iowa. I was about 5 when we got another tiger that I named T.C., for Top Cat, one of my favorite cartoons. My uncle Tom thought I named it after him because that was his nickname in the army. T.C. got hit by a car when I was about 8.

The most interesting man in the world

Note to self

No good deed goes unpunished

My neighbor had her hours cut at work and didn't have enough money to buy groceries this week. She had enough to get by until her next check, except she ran out of Pepsi and cigarettes. I felt sorry for her, so when I was at Walmart this morning, I picked up a six-pack of half-liter Pepsi for her.

When I took it to her, she said, "Did you get me some cigarettes too?"

I said, "Sorry, I didn't know what brand you like."

She said, "I can go get some myself if you give me the money."

My food is laughing at me

On Friday, I bought a piece of cake off the bakery markdown rack at Walmart. That night when I sat down to eat it, the plastic container was a little stiffer than usual so I had trouble getting it open. Once I did, the lid started bouncing up and down and the plastic was making sounds that I swear to god sounded like laughing.

Every time I'd push the lid down, it would pop up and keep laughing. I've been a little paranoid lately and this only reinforced that.

Later that night, I became absolutely convinced that I was going to die. I had a full-blown panic attack. I started hearing voices and felt like the spirits of dead family members were hovering around me. I seriously considered going to the ER and telling the doctors, "I'm either having a heart attack or a psychotic episode. You be the judge."

The message from my ancestors is that I have to quit living in fantasy land and start doing something productive with my life. So I got up and did a little bit of cleaning, which helped calm me down, then I went to sleep.

When I got up on Saturday, I started the day by cleaning bird cages - thoroughly, for the first time in a long while. Then I made a 3-page list of spring cleaning projects. It includes things like dusting all the shelves in my bedroom. Cleaning out all my cupboards. Selling off some of my collectibles. Rearranging furniture, etc.

Today, I checked 2 items off the list. I hung a mirror in my living room - it's been stashed in a corner waiting to be hung for more than a month. And I cleaned a large bookshelf in my bedroom, which included dusting about 40 ceramic cats. They hadn't been dusted since I moved here 2 years ago.

One of the other projects I assigned myself was to work on a memoir I started almost 2 years ago. It's about my experiences being diagnosed with cancer and the treatment that followed. Originally, I planned to make it into a book but now, I want to turn it into a personal essay that I can enter in some contests at literary journals. My friends who edit a journal always have a shortage of quality non-fiction.

So I opened the document and read a bit of what I wrote in July 2010, then closed it again. I just couldn't face going back to how I felt then, back when I was just starting chemo. It was the loneliest time in my very lonely life.

Another thing I decided to do - I put my kitchen timer next to the computer. There are so many times I sit down to do something that should take a few minutes and I'm still sitting here 10 hours later. Today, I allowed myself 30-45 minutes of computer time for each chore I completed.

Earlier tonight, I took my garbage out back then went over to the first building to pay my rent. I left the check in the drop slot at the office, then went out the front door (opposite way I came in) and walked over to the mailbox in front of my building to check my mail. My key fit but it wouldn't turn the lock. I kept double checking that I had the right key. When I still couldn't get it open, I figured the manager must have been changing locks for someone but changed the wrong lock. I was mad because I knew my Netflix movies were in the box.

Nothing else to do but go back to my apartment. When I got there, my door was locked. I didn't remember locking it. I stuck my key in the lock and it wouldn't turn. WTF? Did I have the right set of keys? Yeah, it's the only set I have. Was I on the right floor? Yup. Was it the right apartment number? I wasn't sure.

Who snuck in and changed the lock to my apartment during the few minutes I was gone?

I started to panic, then I noticed one more thing. My apartment has a snowman on the door. There was no snowman on that door - and no rug in front of it either.

I was in the wrong building. It was the building I lived in for 22 years, but now I live next door. It was funny but I'm also kind of worried. I really do think there's something wrong with my brain right now.

And just as I was typing that, I remembered. My psychiatrist increased the dosage on my anti-depressant about 10 days ago, and one of the possible side effects is it could cause me to flip to manic. Maybe the voices I heard last night weren't my dead family members warning me of my impending doom. Maybe I was hallucinating.

I'm going to take some Ativan and try to sleep now. Right after I leave a big note on my kitchen counter reminding myself not to take any Wellbutrin tomorrow.

News from the animal kingdom

1) Megan wants to go fishing. She's already torn the paper off the back of the aquarium for better access.


2) Lizzie helps me clean the bird cages. She expects a feathery snack in return.


3) Lizzie helps me make a rag rug. She's trying it out to make sure it's nice and fluffy.


4) Meanwhile, the birds are plotting against us.