Skip to main content

Going off the Rails on a Crazy Train

While getting an MRI recently, I selected to listen to a classic rock station. Actually I requested a station that played 70s or 80s music and the tech asked if I wanted pop or rock.

"Well, classic rock would probably be better since I have to hold still," I responded. "If I listened to pop, I'd want to be dancing."

And so I laid perfectly still while listening (or kind of listening since really in an MRI you never really drown out the loud bangs, whirs and booms). And it came to pass that the song "Crazy Train" started playing and I started to silently and stillfully laugh to myself. What a strangely perfect song for this moment in my life. Ozzy Osbourne was singing my song (has anyone ever really said that ever before???)! "I'm going off the rails on a crazy train," he sings/screams. (and a bunch of other lyrics I didn't understand because well, I was in an MRI and he was kind of screaming)

You see the reason was that the MRI was a breast MRI (a torturous procedure clearly created by someone without breasts because you lie on your stomach with your arms above your head for 45 minutes). It was ordered by my medical/surgical oncologist to further stage and explore the level of my breast cancer.

Yep, I've got breast cancer.

Triple negative, stage 2 or 3. The MRI was ordered to determine which stage I will play on. Yep, crazy train.

It is a cancer that responds best to chemo so that will be how I begin and I meet with an oncologist tomorrow to discuss specifics (like starting date and length of treatment) and I'm scheduled to get a port on Friday.

So it begins. This is just another hurdle I have to jump (that is a figure of speech but if I need comic relief, I think about my attempts when younger/able to leap a hurdle. it wasn't pretty but sure is funny in hindsight). Because the highlight of 2019, will be the July wedding of Michael Patrick Piggins. 

I also plan to conquer this with my good humor and while blogging, to keep everyone updated. 

Comments

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

Friday Night Lights

Friday night lights were blazing last week - when for the first time in the history of our little town, the Saugatuck Indians clinched the district title! You can see the sheer joy on Matthew's face and the pride in his father's eyes in the picture above. Leading up to and during the game, there were several things that made the victory even more sweet. The first being that the sports writers in the area, to a person, all predicted the opponents, Climax-Scotts, to win. They'd had a perfect season - until Friday. The second was that we had to travel quite a distance (nearly 90 minutes) to get to the game. And the weather was frigid and snow was blowing - thankfully it was blowing towards the Climax-Scotts stands and was at our backs. And then our quarterback injured his shoulder and had to sit out for a good portion of the game. Thankfully, the replacement quarterback (a sophomore called up for the playoffs from the junior varsity team) did not let the stress effect his ...

Vulnerability hangover

I recently blogged about my own #MeToo experiences and then went silent. (At least on the blog). Those posts have been read by over 1000 people, and that's a lot for this tiny little blog about living a life with MS and God and with a sense of humor. Suddenly, I felt like I was living in a world where people that read my blog had x-ray vision and could see my nakedness - but I didn't know who they were. It wasn't a good feeling. And then I heard someone discuss Brene Brown, in particular what she describes as a 'vulnerability hangover'. It's essentially the feeling of regret, like after a night of binge drinking, when you think "What did I do/say?" and then "I think I'll just hide out from the world." If you've never had that experience, kudos to you. It's shame, pure and simple, ugly and raw. So, now I'm on a Brene Brown binge, including all of her TED talks. Including this one on shame:  Brene, listening to shame ...

When being negative is positive and other wonky 'things' in the time of Covid

The world is upside down and back ass-ward. Know what I mean? I was chatting with a cousin the other day and her potential exposure to the corona virus. I wrote, "I'll say prayers for negative results for all. Don't like negativity but these days negative is a positive." Back ass-ward. Remember when we first went in to shut-down mode in mid-March? We were told that it was to flatten the curve of hospital admissions so that our ICU's didn't run out of capacity and to ease the virus' spread. It felt then like we were in this together, all of us were going to help beat this virus and stay home. (Aside from the run on toilet paper!) We were committed, or so it seemed, and our closets were going to be cleaned, our junk drawers were going to be a thing of the past, our garages/basements/and other yucky places were going to gleam. We were going to read "War and Peace" or "Hamilton" or other weighty tomes that we'd always wanted to read. We...