Saturday, June 30, 2012

Put in My Place

So, I started out today a bit grumbly. Well, I was more than that, I was grumpy as hell. It really started out last night when my eye swelled crazy up from my branby new fancy-ass mascara and I looked like I started my own girl fight club. No, it is just me and another thing for my body to rebel against. So, this morning with my punchy eye and two hives on my face, I set out to return the offending mascara (which JC Penney was super awesome in exchanging) and what do I find taped to my front door, but a notice that construction is set to begin on my bathroom starting July 3rd at 8am. Yes, that is when the freaking out commenced and didn't end for some time. I called the office, but it was closed early, for the holiday. Yeah. I went out to the work shed and talked to the head maintenance man and told him that I was more than a bit concerned about the starting date since I have a nuclear kidney scan that morning, I have my bunnies and it is a million and ten degrees. They plan the construction to take about three days, leaving me without water and no bathroom, in this heat. Tearing out walls to make way for a new water heater and new shower tub surround will be wonderful, AFTER. Not right now, when I have two bunnies and sweaty stinky men (that I actually feel sorry for that have to work in this unbelievable heat) traipsing through my apartment, making piles and piles of dust and making me move the entire contents of my bathroom and the huge closet that holds a majority of my belongings elsewhere (elsewhere being my bed and bedroom.)

My first and major concern was my bunnies, where to take them? I couldn't leave them in the apartment with the heat, noise and dust. My Mom at first suggested her living room, but as she has two huge dogs and one can knock over a couch just by jumping up to see you from his excitement, I think I will beg my brother to allow them sanctuary in his room for our exile. I only had one bunny carrier, from The Bun, so I needed to get another. While I was out exchanging my mascara I picked up another carrier and after all this running around, sweating from the heat, grumbling, punchy eye and still keeping on bladder and kidney malarkey I was so grateful to get home to my boys. Then, I turned on the news. Ohhhhh, the news. The thing I have avoided since the cancer started. What do I see, people losing their homes to fire. Am I the biggest asshole or what? Me grumbling because my home is going to be made better, and here are people being evacuated, just miles away from me and my sweet bunny boys. As I type this, Peanut is right next to me on the couch pressing me for pets, so if anything is miss-typed.... oh well.

I ate soup tonight that I made in this kitchen. I watched TV, I used the bathroom, I talked on the phone, I pet my bunnies and later I will sleep on my bed, in the bedroom. I have a place. I make this place mine. It is electrifying to know this.





Friday, June 15, 2012

Hand Holding

This afternoon, I was sitting in a crowded waiting area, and I was waiting. I was watching the others and I noticed how I was the youngest one there. I saw their faces. Then I saw all of their hands. Hands I imagined holding other hands. Hands I saw holding babies when they were born. Hands that held hammers. Hands that fought, hands that caressed. Hands that were once young, soft and supple but are now aged, dry and wrinkled. Hands that are nervous. Hands that are holding on for more time. Hands that will hold someone's hand for the last time. I looked down and wondered who would be holding mine?



Friday, June 8, 2012

... and then I'll miss you.

I overestimated myself. I thought I could go shopping for groceries AND carry them up the stairs AND put them away AND then do both bunny cages. Then have no ill effects. (See, the confidence that comes with that taste of normality doesn't mean I should take humongous gulps) Then I agreed to watch my cousin Sissy's little three year old boy Mason the following day. I haven't watched him in over 6 months since all of this started. She was in a lurch and I missed the funny little bugger. Wednesday night was sucky, pain pain pain but I was excited, truly, to get to play. I mean it. I wanted to play. Like a kid, with a kid. So Thursday comes and the kiddo shows up, and what does Peanut do after Mason only being here for 5 minutes? He jumps up on my bed, and pees on it. I really think this was Peanut's way of saying "Um, listen... you pay attention to me. You love me. No other little creature. Got it? If not, let this be a little reminder." So, Mason helps me strip the bed all the while repeatedly saying "Peanut peed, Peanut peed." Later in the day, while I am getting Pickle a treat of lettuce and saying Pickle's name over and over to entice him to his special treat, Mason mutters "mmmmm, I like pickles." Then, while watching the bunnies eat their lettuce, he informs me he doesn't eat salad while scrunching up his face, implying that anyone who does, is crazy.

Later on, with a kid, a diaper bag, a laundry basket of bunny soiled bedding, a screaming bladder, wincing kidneys, complaining ureter and the remains of an inner ear infection I headed out to my Mom's. Mason was excited to see Barbara. He likes to say Barbara (little kid lips saying Bawb-ar-Wa). He sat next to her on the couch with his plastic green tractor. He threw the kong in the backyard for Bud, but was mystified that Cooper didn't want to play as well. Then, the three of us tried to go to the local park that is being rebuilt, but there were NO SWINGS! How can there be a park, with all types of slides and jungle gyms, but not one single swing? So with no swings, Mason had no interest in the park and we left for home BUT not before a REAL LIFE tractor honked and waved for Mason and drove down the street where Mason was certain that he was going to dig in the dirt. Siss was having her vehicle serviced so I needed to pick her up at the repair shop, so to fill the time we putzed, shopped and got coffees. At one point I was getting out of the car and Siss exclaimed in the funniest voice "Holy crap, your ass is smaller than mine!" I turned around, stuck my head back in the car......paused, paused some more, looked her in the face, then said "I'm sorry?" We both couldn't stop laughing for quite a while. But, I have to say my favorite sentence of the day came from Mason. When it was time to leave my parents' to go get his Mom, I teased him and said he could just stay there while I went to get her. He put this thoughtful look on his face, paused, smiled "Nah, I go too. Get my Mom, and then I'll miss you."




Monday, June 4, 2012

Emotional Swing

Okay, here comes an emotional swing. I have had this stuck in my back pocket since I was diagnosed and haven't taken it out, well in public anyway. I'll get asked in mixed company how I am doing, some won't know about my diagnosis and they will ask, out of curiosity and I am all about sharing information. When you tell people (specially males) that your cancer is cervical cancer, the air gets a little cooler, a little more distance grows and the unspoken definition of how a women gets cervical cancer hangs above waiting to drop like a dirty dirty bomb. Cervical cancer is the Dirty Cancer. You get it from sex. So, me being me I sometimes want to say "Oh, I have that slutty cancer." If you know me, there is so much irony in that sentence. I have only had sex with one man. Ever. And the last time that happened was twelve years ago. You can go and read that sentence again. We lived together, bought a house. Then he left in fabulous douchebag fashion and last September on a routine gynecological visit (meaning I had been having them every year) I was tested positive for HPV and had my first abnormal PAP in those twelve years. How did I never test positive all those years? (I am a freak of nature naturally, so anything goes) My wonderfully kind and sweet gynecologist (who, to my devastation has decided to retire) also informed me that women who take birth control for extended periods of time without ever having children are also likely to have cervical cancer. I had to take birth control for other reasons, say for having such treacherous periods that I couldn't leave the house for weeks at a time, you know those reasons. So, the one two punch. Cancer from ever deigning to have sex, and then from not having enough of it.

Am I mad at ever deciding to be in a relationship, to ever have sex ever? Men don't have a test for HPV so most just go around willy nilly with no signs and we females end up with the majority of the life threatening consequences. Is the best way to just wrap yourself in cellophane and never have sex again? If I ever see Neil again will I punch him in the penis? Or do I just feel rage at the universe for giving me the kind of immune system that would hold onto a virus that any other human would have discarded after three years? Do I hold up my fists and shake shake shake them because my uterus was never a fit candidate for children to start and I had to take medicine to keep me from bleeding so much every month that I could operate as a relatively normal human being?

No. It was how it was. It is how it is. It will be how it will be.

Will there be a penis punch in the future? Anything is possible.



Sunday, June 3, 2012

New Presciption

I didn't know I couldn't see until I was in the fifth grade. When you are young (or maybe not so young) you think that the way you view the world is the same way everyone else views it. In my case it was very very fuzzy. I had no idea that other kids could see what was on the chalkboard from the back of the classroom, or even from the front of the classroom for that matter. I saw things how I saw them, or didn't see them and I just went on with it. When it was discovered that I couldn't see, after I was continually moved closer and closer to the front of the class while still never being able to see the board, I finally figured out something was wrong. I will never forget the ride home from getting my new glasses, wearing them for the first time. I sat in the passenger seat, beyond starry-eyed, pointing out all the new things I could see. "Mom, I can see the leaves on the trees! Mom, I can read that sign from here! Mom, I can see the snow on the mountain!" It went on and on, while my mother silently cried as she drove the car. She was so sad that she had no idea her daughter was nearly legally blind, and to hear me exclaim my excitement to finally truly see the world in all of its intricate delicacies was a lot to handle.

I have been thinking about that moment a lot, not only because of my mother, but because of the concept of focus. Cancer changes your view, and shifts your focus. What once was fuzzy, isn't. Everything is newly framed.


The Bun

The Bun
If you don't like rabbits, you can suck it, shove it and then go soak your head.