Happy to say goodbye

For the last four years I've been living with the lump. It has been there at the back of my mind always, worrying me. Last week, I finally had it out. It was a simple procedure and I knew I was in good hands. Now, I'm minus the lump and plus a scar. The account balances.

I'm happy.

Sometimes I love hospitals

On a day like today, I love hospitals. They seem like such friendly places. Of course, it helps when your older and only sister is with you every moment of the check up. It also helps that the surgeon is your not-so-little-anymore-cuz. Anyways, the tests are over. I have been checked. Ultrasounded. Palpated. CLEARED!!! And been told NOT to fret, fume, freak or in any way frighten myself or others!

The lump has behaved itself. Follow up check up in August. And then once a year.

:-) And it helped so much; all of you being so encouraging and supportive. Thanks!!!

The Lump and I

Going for a check up. The lump that I do not like to think about needs to be checked by a surgeon so that everyone is sure it has behaved itself and stayed cool. I'm a coward, especially when I think of being sick. I worry. Oh how I worry.

The lump and I have got to know each other well over the last eight months. When it thinks that I have forgotten it, it makes its presence felt with the slightest of twinges. Sometimes, it's a series of twinges, as if it has had a good day and is doing a little jig to let me know that it owns a small territory in my left breast. Kind of a territorial dance.

I will be spending next week being poked and prodded with gel all over me, having cold hard probes imaging my insides. Hospitals are not on my list of favourite places. Mammogram rooms, ultrasound cabins and other sundry scanning rooms even less so. They frighten me. But, and this is quite a big BUT, spending three or four days there is preferable to having out-of-control cells growing in my body.

I worry.
Oh how I worry.

Counting my blessings

Yesterday, I was going through some old papers and came across a book that belonged to an old friend. It was his song book. He had written out the lyrics for over a hundred songs in that book. I had forgotten it existed but the funny thing is, whenever I sang one of those songs, I used to see the written lyrics in my mind's eye and guess what, those pictures in my mind are from this book. This was before the days of browsing and finding lyrics. It was in those olden days when we in India had to wait a year or more to get the latest songs on cassettes or LPs. We used to listen to the songs and write down the words. It would take us days of listening to finally get most of the words. Maybe, that's the reason I still remember most of them. I spent most of yesterday humming out loud. It was such a happy day.

That's what I like about my life these days - there's a feeling of deep contentment inside me, and it's there because I've found joy within myself after a slightly difficult year. It was not a year that I would wish on anyone. Let's see... there was a time when I felt that getting through just one day was such a task. There's this song that I love and I had it on my screensaver the whole year :-)

One day at a time sweet Jesus

That's all I'm asking from you.

Just give me the strength

To do everyday what I have to do.

Yesterday's gone sweet Jesus

And tomorrow may never be mine.

Lord help me today, show me the way

One day at a time.

Yesterday with all the old songs humming around in my head, I sat down and took stock of the last year.

Well, my father's well on the road to recovery, thank God for that. And I had such support from so many friends and relatives. So many of them who called me or visited on a daily/weekly basis just to talk and be there. Of all the countless blessings I'm grateful for, those people rank right up there on top.

I spent a month out of action - reasons detailed in earlier posts. I feel okay now, back to normal but more important, able to face with equanimity, the possibility that there may be problems in the future.

My house has been quite some time in the building, but it is almost complete. Another two weeks and I hope to move in along with my parents. It's a pretty house and I'll talk about it in some later post.

I went out with some friends on Saturday and danced the night away. It was a glorious feeling. I love dancing, and I can't claim to know any specific dance steps but moving to the rhythm of the music and my heart is something I love. It makes me feel so alive and so full of happiness.

Ooooooh, I just can't wait to find out what next week, next month and next year hold. No matter what it is, now I know that everything that happens is a possible adventure and all I have to do is go out and live it. The anticipation of finding out whether each day holds a dragon or an angel, that's what makes my world so exciting.

So go out there and live and exciting life! Or come and be a part of my world :-)

As Daliah Lavi sang

'.... And in my world, which seems so clear

The people laugh, they have no fear

So take my hand and come along

Into my world where you belong........'

Faith or Fear?

Felt a twinge of heat in my left breast last night. I don't want to become the paranoid type of person who starts at every sound or is constantly obsessing about the possibility of being seriously ill. But, somewhere within me, I have this awareness that I'm hosting a lump .9cm x .5cm which doesn't really belong in my breast. It's benign and I'm an optimistic person so it doesn't really bother me, but on a realistic note, the fact that the doctors want another ultrasound in February keeps me from being totally comfortable. I don't think about it much but it reminds me once in a while that it's there, that it's established residence and will remain until it's cut out and removed.

This has made me think about having faith and being brave. Does crying when you're worried mean that you're not brave? Or even that you don't have faith? There were a few days when all I did was worry about the lump and what it meant. Someone told me to have faith because God wouldn't let anything bad happen. This is something I thought about; a lot. For me, faith is not the certainty that bad things do not happen; it's the certainty that no matter what happens, I come to it because God brought me to it. And if he brings me to it, then no matter what it is, he'll guide me through it.

The operative word here is 'guide'. He shows the way, and it's up to you to follow it. Sometimes, when I've made a mess of a situation, for instance, I wonder why I did it. Was there something I could have done to have saved the situation? Of course, there was. I could have been kinder, less nasty, more balanced and so on. In hindsight, of course, I know this. And I realise that just as the fear of the lump had overwhelmed faith for a few days, sometimes, I let arrogance instead of kindness rule my actions.

Is chronic worrying a disorder?

I have hypertension. There, I said it out loud!!! You have no idea how scared I've been ever since this was detected. It all started because of a scare about having breast cancer, which it turns out, I do not have. This is the second time in my life that I have panicked about the big C. But both times, it was with reason. I'm just lucky I guess that it turned out to be something far more mundane which could be ignored.
However, the visit to the doc, which I'd been putting off for years, meant that I can't ignore either the BP or the weight. The good news is that all the blood tests and stuff came back normal. Whew!! My biggest worry there was that I had diabetes - I'm not deeply into sweets, but let someone tell me I can't have something and the said thing suddenly becomes the most attractive thing in the world. I worry about that. When the test for blood sugar came back normal, I worried about the creatinine, I worried about the blood urea, I worried about the tests and I worried about worrying about the tests - no wonder my BP was shooting up .
I worry unnecessarily, this is a character trait. I can worry so much that I make something bad happen. Well, as they say tomorrow is another day, hopefully a worry-free day for me and for all of you out there.

Does being hot mean you have cancer?

This was a few months ago. I was with a friend in his car and he suddenly commented that I was hot! Okay, now that's a compliment if I ever heard one so there I was, all happy and smiling, when he said - "No ya!!(poof, pricked my balloon of happiness) I'm talking about your temperature - you're HOTHOTHOT!! Do you have fever or something? And how come only one half of you is radiating heat like an oven?" Okay, I probably should have listened to what he was saying but all I heard was that extremely dampening NO YA at the beginning- tuned off after that. Anyway, the next morning, I wasn't hot or even mildly lukewarm and I had decided that I definitely hated him mildly and quickly forgot all about him and the heat. Many many many months later (I had forgotten the heat episode) one evening he comes up with - "Oh my God, you're HOT again. What is wrong with you?" What was he implying? That he had such an effect on me that I had hot flashes because of him? Hmmm... maybe, if the time and place are right, sure. But, hello, what's wrong with the man, he's talking about my temperature again. This time though, I figure it has nothing to do with him. I had actually started to imitate a tandoori oven. Dry unbearable heat was rising from my chest. Googled it - "elevated temperature+breasts"- and horror of horrors, all the sites that came up were sites on breast cancer.

Oh oh, this was no longer a laughing matter, was it? I was going to die of cancer. I was too young for this. What was I to do? First on the list was a breast self-exam. Found about five lumps or lump-like tissue. There was a discolored patch shaped like a paramecium , reminded me so much of my seventh standard bio text. Okay, this was also a symptom of the big C. Obviously, I panicked and headed to see a doctor, which was this morning. She was very encouraging and all that,( apparently the lumps I thought I'd felt were just breast tissue) but at the end I found that her prescription included a mammograph. The test has to be done to rule out any possibility of a malignancy. There's a family history of cancer and I suppose there are good chances that this thing could creep up on us.
I'm off for a full check up anyway and will be back online whenever possible.
I wish now that I'd listened to my friend many months ago and seen a doctor then. If this turns out to be bad news, I'm going to kick myself for not having heard what he said, instead of just hearing what I thought he was saying. I don't know when I will tell him this, but boy am I bloody grateful to him for being so heat-sensitive.
And the rest of you out there, listen when your friends talk, what they say may actually save your life!!!
P.S. All women should learn how to do a breast self-exam. It really helps if you get a doctor to show you how.