Things I have learned this week

There is no disguising Tramadol's taste in order to get it down Max's gullet. The best method is a spur of the moment sneak attack and a quick shove of an unadorned teensy little quarter tablet down his throat. Done. Over. No spitting foam and softened diguise material, as he violently rejects the whole mess and flings it two feet from himself where the medication is half-dissolved and useless and I have to wipe up the slop and start over, muttering, "I'm so glad I paid actual money for this medication."

There is something called cat flu, and I think that's what MiMau has.  Husband took her to the vet's office last Monday and saw the vet in the practice in whom I have the least confidence. The vet took a blood sample, said it would be back Wednesday or Thursday and would call. We haven't received a call. A call to the clinic resulted in, "Dr. B. is out until Monday and will call you then." In the meantime, MiMau's perking up in tiny increments, and has begun to be interested in food, although only a kibble at a time, carefully mouthed until she finds a spot in her mouth where she feels like chewing it. I currently have some kibble soaking in the drained juice from canned tuna. We'll try that. Her personality is much in evidence now though, unlike last weekend, and she's drinking water, so I think we've turned the corner. Apparently this cat flu is self-limiting, and there's nothing to be done for it anyway, so we just have to ride it out. 

I'm glad I don't have the daughter for whose birth I longed for years.  I probably would have birthed and raised a daughter with a personality like my own.  I'm guessing that she would have had the same introspective, mulling personality, and she would have gotten herself caught in a morass of emotional turbulence of her own making, and none of my hard-won wisdom would have made the slightest bit of difference. I only got smart after I'd been to Hell and back, and some people just have to do it that way. 

The less I worry about stuff, the better it all goes. It was an absolutely stellar week in Jane's office, with nary an error except other people's, which I, feeling magnanimous and heroic, found and fixed.  It started with Payroll Monday when I got to work late after a doctor visit (pre-op physical physician said, "Get that blood pressure down before surgery!" so off to regular doctor for yet another BP reading and prescription). I bustled into work, pulled together the materials I needed and just did payroll. It was flawless. And angst-free. Imagine that.  Whenever I do something without paying too much attention to it (vinaigrette salad dressing comes to mind) it always works out better.

The prospect of my (next Wednesday) transformation into a Uniboob doesn't bother me as much as other people expect it to. I seem to have friends hovering around, waiting for me to turn into a quivering wreck, and I've been waiting to see if I'm in denial and will, in fact, come to a crashing realization of . . . something.  I think I've truly come to terms with it. Overall, since last . . . what, March? . . . I've had maybe a total of seventy-two hours of "Oh my God!" and now I'm looking forward to getting it over with and moving on. The options presented to me were two:

1. Traditional simple (total) mastectomy, or
2. A second lumpectomy followed by five weeks of five days per week radiation treatment.

The third option was, of course, to do nothing and wait to see when (not if) the remaining slightly odd cells would turn invasive. That made both #1 and #2 look quite a bit more attractive.  I chose the first option because I don't feel like making a career out of having breast cancer. It'll be gone, done, over. Much like pilling Max. We'll worry later about whether or not I feel the need for two lumps instead of one.  I'm thinking . . . if, down the road sometime . . . the other one has to go, I'll opt then for two gigantic Dolly Partons. At this stage of my life, the one remaining Natural One on the right and Smooth And Flat on the left will probably appear more similar than one Natural One and one Firm And Perky.  The deciding moment was when the surgeon told me that, even lying down, a new one would be up there, while the other reclined in my armpit. That would be just silly. And exceedingly painful in the achievement. For what?  Or, you know, when I feel the need for more time off from work, I can decide I need reconstruction. I gather recovery from that is far longer than the two weeks I'll need to get over a simple boobectomy (which term, incidentally, Lord Wellbourne tells me he always thought of as a euphemism for divorce). 

I'm so glad I still have the husband I started out with. There have been times when I've wished he were more romantic in the candlelight-and-rose-petals way, and times when I've wished for him to be more this way or that way...  I'm so glad we rode out all that stuff. Now we know each other and while it isn't exciting and heart-fluttering, it's such a comfort to have somebody to see every day who is completely familiar and who says, "You won't be disfigured. You'll have a scar. So what?"  That might be one of those "y'hadda be there" moments, but I was, and it was a pretty significant moment.

Thanks to Hilary for choosing this as one of her Posts of the Week