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January 18, 2008

Too Much

It's been almost a week since I posted here. Why? Let me just give you the highlights:

1) HIDEOUS cold. How hideous? Coughing up a lung--splat!--hideous. On Saturday of last week I finally gave in and went to the local doc-in-the-box to get some anti-biotics. My reasoning on this?
     a) The situation had not improved lung-wise in the previous eight days. I was still coughing and retching and it was just nasty.
     b) I have a tendency for bronchitis to turn into pneumonia and the prolonged nastiness indicated that was about to happen. I was being proactive in catching it fairly early.
     c) I didn't want to have to run to the emergency room in the middle of the night to get it dealt with.
     d) I had a fever. Which rose while I was sitting in the waiting room.

I did not get antibiotics.

Why? Not sure. Apparently I am not the most responsible of human beings, someone who obviously runs to the doctor for antibiotics at the first sign of a sniffle and so cannot be trusted to actually know what I need to be healthy. Grrrrrrrrr. I really, really don't want to have to try to fit another doctor visit into my schedule. Because:

2) Follow-up mammogram.
On January 2, as a way to welcome in the New Year and as the responsible grown-up thing to do, I had my baseline mammogram done. Look after your own health, I say. (And maybe learn to stand up for yourself better around doctors.) The following week, I received a printout with the results. And a hand-written note, "Sally, the doctor has requested follow-up imagery of your left breast. Please call us to schedule an appointment."

Does that sound a teeny bit like "OHMYGOD YOU MAY HAVE CANCER" to anybody else, or just me?

Here's the deal. I knew it wasn't. I'm in good health, I eat (fairly) well, when I'm not coughing up my lungs (splat!) I try to be physically active, and I'm pretty sure I'd notice a difference in the way I feel if there was an issue. I'm pretty body aware. It' an occupational hazard. Plus, there is no history of cancer in my family. Well, not NO history. There are two cases of skin cancer in the last three generations. One being my grandfather who worked for the Arizona Highway Department in the era before sunscreen. Regardless, we're a pretty cancer-free bunch.

Still, I worried. Because, you know, what if I was in denial? What if there really was something wrong and I was just ignoring it or too stupid to realize it was an issue? Plus, everyone kept saying, "No history of cancer doesn't mean anything." Really? I think there must be a connection somewhere. I mean, there are families out there who are just rotten with it for no apparent reason. Shouldn't both sides of it be studied? Like the common cold? Don't just pay attention to the people who always get sick (me), take a good, hard look at the people who never do (Dave). Because the information you need may be on that side of the equation.

So anyway, I had a follow-up mammogram (and ultrasound, yay!) on Monday.

And I am FINE. Apparently, one of the original shots created a gland palimpsest on the image, and they just wanted to be sure it was that and not anything "of concern." Which I appreciate.

By the way, for those women who have not yet had their baseline mammograms done, a follow-up is pretty common apparently. They want to check out ANYTHING that's not symmetrical to be sure they shouldn't worry. Someone should tell us that when we get the damn exam in the first place.

3) School.
Oh sweet Jesus. School. We are at the end of Week Two of the semester already, and I have been trying to plan, grade, create/update major assignment descriptions and teach while dealing with the ghastly cold. Also to "evaluate" a set of freshman writing assignments from last fall for goals assessment blahblahblah. Which means that I come home from campus and collapse on the couch and stare at things.

Though I have started reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf. It's amazing what a difference time and educating your palate as a reader can do to comprehension and appreciation. Because I read A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway as an undergrad twenty years ago, and I never realized the woman had a sense of humor. She does. Some of the comments she sneaks in about readers and writers and "literary people" are hilarious. Very sly stuff.

But if I hadn't been thinking about teaching Orlando next fall (based on seeing the movie several years ago), I wouldn't have picked up the book (or put it on my Kindle). Because I remembered her writing as being uplifting but humorless and really, really dense. You have to work a bit to appreciate Ms. Woolf. I'm so glad I did dive into the novel, because it's exactly the kind of thing my brain was looking for. Beauty, humor, and a good story with some meat to it.

By the way, if you're looking for a fun, quick read, and you're a bit of an Anglophile (who, me?) I highly, HIGHLY recommend The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett (yes, The History Boys author, that Alan Bennett). Queen Elizabeth II is the heroine of the novella, and it's the story of her development as a reader. Pure silliness, but so much fun.

So that's pretty much what I've been doing instead of writing, working and healing. And stressing about various things. Including the discovery that a person can apparently get all the way through high school and into college without knowing what a thesis statement is. (Though my personal favorite essay was the one where the student had a very clear thesis and used two examples to support it, one of which was actually a direct refutation of their argument. That's why we proof our work, people. And why we don't get so attached to a thesis that we can't re-work it. If half of your evidence says you're wrong, you may want to reconsider whatever it is you're trying to prove.)

And now I need to get my butt off the couch. I have a lecture on the Male Gaze to deliver today. Sigh. They're all going to hate me and assume that I hate men, when I'm just explaing a theory that I have a hard time swallowing entirely. It's a little simplistic, in my view, and doesn't take complexity of the human thought process into account. But it will give them something to argue about.

Posted by sally at January 18, 2008 08:43 AM

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