New Inspiration!

I haven't written anything on my blog for a very long time. I have struggled to overcome depression about the many negative events that have happened in my life since January 2008. I didn't want to relive those things anymore by writing them down, and I didn't think anyone would ever want to read them either. However, when we had our moving sale a couple of weeks ago, a professor from UCF stopped by. As we were talking, I discovered he was an author who wrote about his own experiences. He told me to write for no one but myself. According to him, if I write for myself, others will want to read it. So, here I am with fresh inspiration to write down those things that impact me in my "life in the bottle". I will be posting much more in the future as I write strictly for the internal need I have to review my life in print!

Life in the bottle discovers there is a learning curve for grandparenting!

While watching our granddaughter, Karissa, last night, I discovered that I am not as savvy a "Grammy" as I envisioned myself. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes when 16 month old Karissa walked in and handed me a diaper. She was saying the word "diaper", and I congratulated her on her excellent pronunciation. A bit later, she brought me the baby wipes...then comprehension dawned...I'm sure she was thinking, "How many hints do I have to give this Grammy!!"

Life in the bottle has an opinion.

This 2008 Presidential election has me feeling like I live in the Twilight Zone. Never in the years that I have lived in this great country have I ever heard the plainly socialist agenda espoused by a mainstream political party so accepted and welcomed with totally uninformed enthusiasm! How can a major figure running for President of our country speak of the need to spread the wealth around by taxing our nation's producers to gift those who do not achieve?

Our society has operated for more than 200 years on the principle that hard work and effort provide the opportunity to create personal wealth. This wealth can be saved, spent, or invested at the entrepreneur's discretion. What right does the government have to take that hard earned wealth? Spreading the wealth around does not increase opportunity for non-achievers. Spreading the wealth around encourages sloth, not diligence as a work ethic. Spreading the wealth around fosters dependence on others, not a valuing of self-reliance. Spreading the wealth around creates a vacuum of critical thinking, not the promotion of creative ingenuity. The greatness of the United States was founded on those who diligently built their lives, families, and communities with hard work, who valued personal goals achieved through self-reliance, and proudly became economic leaders in the world with industrial and mechanical innovation.

My political viewpoint does not come from the vantage of having financial success or personal achievement. This year has seen the loss of my husband's job, the loss of our home, personal financial ruin, and a serious health crisis. My hope does not come from promises made in a Presidential campaign that the government will provide programs to "economically equalize" those facing hardships. My hope comes from seeing our economic system reward hard work and truly knowing that the United States has historically been the Land of Opportunity. I want to believe that my life will be better someday, because the only limitations I have are the ones I place on myself. I don't want my government to have the power to control my ability to create my own future, even if that means others have life better than I do right now. Economic achievement is more keenly appreciated when the realization of it is not an easy thing.

I fervently pray that the majority of this country's voters will wake-up before change destroys the personal freedoms that have been treasured by generations of Americans.

Life in the Bottle remains under construction

Since March 7th of this year, I have been undergoing reconstruction to repair demolition from the procedure called "mastectomy". The demolition also took place on March 7th. The process is called immediate reconstruction; however, the term should not be understood to mean reconstructed immediately. The truth is the reconstruction process has begun, but this process usually takes up to a year to complete. I have undergone 3 surgeries thus far. The latest one was yesterday. In 3 months, I will get my first and only tattoo to complete the breast reconstruction.

My plastic surgeon is the Michelangelo of plastic surgery. He is definitely an artisan and a great surgeon. However, he will never be a great doctor unless he accepts that his artistry is not done on inanimate objects. His art medium is the human body, and much as he might want to, he will not be able to successfully back the humanity out of his patients. My first visit in his office was about 3 weeks prior to my mastectomy. My husband went with me, and Dr. C appeared to be nice enough. The only impressions I had about him were that he seemed very credentialed, and he was very, very small. I don't mean just short, he was very tiny in every aspect. This initial exam concluded in a positive way, and he was selected to come in right after the breast surgeon was finished to begin the reconstruction process.

The next visit to his office began innocently enough. There was nothing to indicate that this doctor's visit would turn out to be the most traumatic medical episode in my life. I was to go there the day before surgery for a pre-op appointment. This appointment was to go over the blood work done the day before, get my prescriptions, and be told where and when to go to the hospital the following day. To my surprise and growing horror, I was told that I would not be actually admitted to the hospital. I was to be housed in a unit called Rapid In and Out. This unit did not even contain real rooms. There were curtained off areas only, and you had to walk down the hallway to one of two bathrooms on the unit. Also, I was informed that I would be sent home almost as fast as they could yank the tubes out. The final straw was when the nurse said that I would have to care for my own drain at home. I did not know what a "drain" was, or what caring for one entailed. I did know that the learning curve for this new and terrifying data was going to be extremely short. I'm sure for them this information was something they discussed on a daily basis, and were very familiar with. I, however, was totally unfamiliar with any of it, and this surgery for breast cancer was the most challenging health issue I had ever faced or hoped to face. The hospital protocol for my care certainly seemed callous and lacking in any measure of medical competency. I was in this office without any family member or friend, listening to this information, trying to make some sense of the butchery planned for me on the next day, and I was doing my utmost not to cry. To my dismay, I did shed a few tears and was visibly distraught. At this point, Dr. C said to me, "You need a counselor. I can't help you. I don't want to help you. I must remain absolutely objective when I go into surgery. I don't want to know you. I don't even want to recognize your face when I enter the OR." I was horrified to the point of being in shock. I said very little the rest of the appointment. I just wanted to get out of there. All the way back to work, I kept thinking that I had to go through with the surgery the next day, because I had to get rid of the cancer most of all. If a very dear friend hadn't recognized the soul wrenching distress etched on my face, I would have continued on through the cancer treatment without ever releasing the agony and hurt caused by Dr. C.

I look back now and wonder, to how many other women has he showed the same coldness and distain during a life altering time for them. I vowed after that appointment I would not go again to see him without a family member or friend with me. Even though this doctor has been cordial to me since that incident (I believe my breast surgeon had a few words with him following the pre-op debacle), I still long for the day when I will no longer have to go to his office. What a shame that a doctor so gifted and talented lacks the fundamental qualities of compassion and kindness, for without those, no doctor can be called "great".

Yesterday, as I went through my third procedure with Dr. C, I did get a little revenge. Even if he doesn't know about it, I am certainly petty enough to find pleasure in it anyway. The head anesthesiologist came in to discuss any past health concerns and health history. He was a very amicable gentleman, and we got along quite well. As he was getting ready to leave, I wanted to ensure he didn't forget about the Versed (loopy juice as I call it). He reminded me that Dr. C hadn't been in to talk to me yet, and I couldn't have the "loopy juice" until after speaking with him. To which I replied, "I have given Dr. C all the advice I can. He's going to have to be on his own now!" My nurse tried very, very hard not to laugh out loud, but she was largely unsuccessful. After the anesthesiologist left, the nurse said that she didn't think Dr. C would need any advice. I said, "I know. He does seem to have a healthy dose of self confidence!". She said that actually he had Little Man Syndrome. At which point, I had to interject, "Yes, he does...in a Big way."


Life in the Bottle gets a petty revenge!

Life in the bottle makes me smile!

I am the Office Manager for a periodontist in Orlando. Many of our patients are elderly. It is not uncommon for one of the office staff to see the photo of one of our patients in the Obit section of the paper. We are all sad when one of them passes on. One patient in particular has been coming for appointments during the last year in a wheelchair. This patient is very incapacitated and physically frail. However, on her last routine visit, the dentist I work for discovered that she needed some surgical treatment. Her appointment was scheduled on a day that Dr. C was in one surgery after another. On those kind of days, the schedule can get backed up, because surgery time can be estimated, but the length of necessary time can't be planned out to the minute perfectly. When this elderly patient arrived for her appointment, Dr. C was running behind in the previous surgery. We had another patient arrive for a short observation appointment for a check of healing in a surgical site. This patient tends to be very grouchy when left waiting in the reception area too long. Given the dynamics of those two patients in the reception area, I went to check with one of our assistants about Dr. C's progress on the surgery in the operatory suite. About this time I was feeling a bit of panic. I said to the assistant, "How much longer is Dr. C going to be? Mr. F doesn't like to wait to be seen. Ms. M has also arrived, and I don't think she will last too long." Our assistant, without missing a beat and totally deadpan, said, "My, you are sure full of optimism today." At that quip, I realized how my inquiry had come across...fortunately, Dr. C wasn't delayed very much longer. Both patients were seen in a timely fashion. We didn't lose our patient, and she only bit the doctor once!

Life in the Bottle has a couple of observations.

The breast cancer journey is not all crisis and panic. Occasionally, there is cause for laughter; in fact, I have recently realized that I have a rather sick sense of humor when it comes to my breast cancer experiences. The first glimmer of humor I found in the whole situation was actually the day of my mastectomy at the hospital. Prior to surgery, I was required to go down to the Nuclear Medicine Department at Florida Hospital. There they were to inject the biopsy site with a radioactive material enabling the surgeon during surgery to more effectively locate the Sentinel Node. As I sat in a wheel chair being rolled into the bowels of the hospital, I could hear very loud construction type noises ahead. I kept thinking that the orderly pushing my chair would veer in another direction, soon, to go away from all the noise and chaos. Instead, on we went, closer and closer to the huge black plastic curtain and the din of a jackhammer. When I knew that we were absolutely not going to veer away from the jackhammer from beyond the River Styx, I thought, "Oh, my! They're really pulling out the big guns down in nuclear medicine!". At the very last minute, the orderly turned the chair to the left, followed the black plastic curtain, then wheeled me into a waiting elevator. Whew! That was a close one! Fortunately, in this day of modern medicine, the implementation of surgical jackhammers appears to be passe.

Life in the bottle can be amusing.

This year (2008) has to date scored fairly high on the ick-o-meter of life. However, situations do crop up when you just have to laugh. For example, I had to schedule a diagnostic mammogram for the remaining "mammo", and I wanted to ask them if I would get a 50% discount. That's when you realize that you have developed a very sick sense of humor! I did finally get enough nerve to ask that question and was told there is a discounted rate for those of us who only need half as much torture. (I once tried to explain the experience of a mammogram to my husband by saying, "You take your favorite body part, and stand on your tiptoes to put it on a piece of very cold glass. Then a total stranger arranges said body part just so on the still icy glass. There is also another plate of glass that is lowered so carefully over the now nicely arranged body part. About the time you think, okay, I can stand it, the total stranger cranks the top glass plate down and the bottom glass plate up with your very sensitive body part caught smack-dab in the middle! Then she says, "Hold your breath and don't move"...like it's possible at that point!)

I am still under construction, and until last week was going regularly to the plastic surgeon's office for saline injections to fill the expander. I am finished with those now, but as I wait for surgery in July to replace the expander with a permanent prosthetic implant, I am faced with a rather embarrassing dilemma. I will be noticeably uneven until after the July surgery. Because I have to be seen in public places until that time, I have started using an insert for the smaller side. The other day at work we were doing a bit of late Spring cleaning- lifting, dusting, throwing trash in the dumpster. As I returned from "dumpster duty", I kept thinking something was a little off, but I couldn't put my finger on the problem. I continued on into the office. Some more time elapsed before I realized that now instead of 2 fairly even bumps in my shirt, I now sported 3! That pesky ole' insert had wriggled its way free during our cleaning frenzy. I just had to laugh- there's been so little to laugh about regarding the cancer. What a blessing to find some humor in this rather sobering situation!