And so it Continues

PC's appointment Thursday went well. The physicians at Duke were not on board with our brilliant plan to have the radiation treatments locally. So they'll give us the final treatment plan on Thursday but the treatment will take place at Duke. PC's brother lives near there so he'll stay with them. The tentative plan looks like six weeks of radiation Monday through Friday and PC should be able to come home on weekends. Then a four week rest, then surgery and recovery. They did a lot of tests this week (including a biopsy) and the test results could change the tentative plan. We like plans. We can deal with this one.

And so it Begins

PC has an appointment with an Orthorpedic Oncologist at Duke University tomorrow morning. He should come home Friday or Saturday with a treatment plan for his radiation and/or chemotherapy that can be administered by our local Navy hospital. So that's good. But scary. He is starting cancer treatment. He has cancer. Thank you sincerely to all of the people who commented with good wishes and advice. I'm sure I'll keep you all "posted." OMG that is so lame. I swear I used to be funny.

The C Word (not that one - get your mind out of the gutter)

I had to take my middle son T to traffic court on Friday. Legally, being 18, he didn't need me. But I'm a lawyer and his mommy so I went. We sort of enjoyed watching the parade of defendants before us (we were the last case heard). I was amazed at how many people say they had to drive 80 miles an hour in a 55 mile an hour zone because they were unfamiliar with the area. It amused us both and required that the bailiff shush us a couple of times. The result was perfect - traffic school followed by a dismissal of all charges. We left the courthouse in a very good mood, chatting annd laughing in a way that doesn't happen all that often between me and that particular child.



On the way to the courthouse T had been trying to explain to me that, for him, Virginia is cursed. He claims that every time something good happens to him here it is immediately followed up by something ten times worse. I don't think Virginia itself is cursed but Friday certainly followed that pattern.



After court, we went downtown to my office, our plan was for T to help me move some boxes and then to go to lunch somewhere away from the house where he hadn't been before. Mom and son bonding.



We called PC on the way to give him the good court results and he interrupted me to say he'd received the results of the MRI he'd had the day before on his knee. (The results were not supposed to be availabe for two weeks.) All indications are that PC has a very large cancerous mass on his leg. Possible diagnosis are sarcoma and nerve sheath tumor. I'm not sure what we did in the world before google. There are only two Navy Orthopedic Oncologists on the East Coast and they are both deployed so we'll find out today whether he'll be going to Richmond (two hours north) or Duke (around three hours south) for his treatments. The treatment will be radiation and/or chemotherapy to shrink the tumor followed by surgery. There are two schools of thought on whether or not they'll biopsy first - one school of thought is that the rapid growth (it has been eight weeks at the most since he noticed it and it is about the size of half of a brick) indicates it is cancerous and it should not be messed with at all until the surgery; the other school of though it that a needle biopsy won't disturb it. The only good thing about this tumor is that it appears to be "well-circumscribed" so I'm for not messing with it.



PC is the kind of person who simply puts something bad out of his mind. He left for work before dark where he no doubt did his daily two hour workout. He says this is going to be fine although the rehab will be "a pain." He thinks if his treatment is in Richmond he'll just drive himself up there two or three times a week. If its at Duke he'll stay with his brother. No big deal. Except for all his googling I don't think he gets what radiation and/or chemotherapy can do. Superman is about to run into Kryptonite.



And then there's me. I am the type of person who must think through the worst option all the way to its bitter end. All the way through. Its how I deal with things. They hardly ever turn out as bad as I've imagined and that's a comfort. Except for the times that they do...

Edited at 11:34 p.m. to add: Today the efficient Navy medical machine was able to get PC a consult in DC for NOVEMBER. Excuse me - what do they need, a whole brick. I've been madly googling looking for an Orthopedic Oncologist who accepts Tricare (PC, as an active duty military person is not allowed to leave the network of Tricare physicians). I found ONE. Granted, I was only looking in our Tricare region (the North region which doesn't make much sense but I didn't draw the boundaries). His doctor has calls in to two other doctors who haven't called back. WTF. His referral uses words like "urgent" and "paramount." But he can't get an appointment.

Oh yeah, and this type of cancer... it often comes from exposure to radiation. All those years he spent repairing nuclear subs don't appear to have done much for him. But he was defending our country... keep your flags waiving. Mine is beginning to droop.

The Rabbit Lived (and that's a good thing)

I have spent the majority of the past three weeks noting my mounting symptoms of early pregnancy. Not with joy and anticipation but more like resignation and dread. I know how these things happen. Although it would have been my fourth unplanned pregnancy. It doesn't really matter how; it happened. (In my defense though someone took my last pack of birth control pills out of my bathroom. I suspect one of my son's friends. I don't know - I only look in the stupid box once a month to pull out a new pack. And then, voila, the new pack was gone. Along with its handy dispensing device.) Damn it. It took nearly a week for the cracker jack Navy Medical system to provide me with my six month refill. So I warned PC. This one was all on him. He could choose to abstain, buy some condoms, be a selfish bastard for a whole month, it was all up to him. I've never considered any form of permanent birth control because there has never been a day I could truly say never again. Including today. PC's take on the whole thing is that we only had one accident in 16 years and are therefore unlikely to have another.

I never had a positive pregnancy test - I had several negative urine tests. And the symptoms kept mounting. Constant nausea (no vomiting as long as I ate pretty much 24 hours per day), breast tenderness, fatigue (I fell asleep every day from 2:00 until 3:15 or so - and yes I am at work then), leg cramps that made me wake up screaming in the night, constant urination, unbearable lower back pain... I had it all. Thursday, though, the bleeding started. Light at first, maybe implantation? But I knew. I am 46 years old. The Pumpkin is a miracle that is unlikely to recur. That's okay for us. We don't need (or really even want) any more kids. So heavy bleeding, dreadful stabbing pains, the end. In the olden days this happened all the time. People didn't know they were pregnant so soon. They'd suspect, and they'd bleed, and they would assume they were wrong. Lucky them.


It is strange. Many of the blogs I am semi-addicted are written by women who would have been overjoyed by the apparent pregnancy and then devastated by the end. I am neither. I usually feel a vague sense of guilt to be so ridiculously fertile when other women have to try so hard to conceive. Today I feel only relief that we don't have to deal with a pregnancy just now. It is quite difficult enough to deal with a very strong willed 2-1/2 year old. And then Friday we found out that we're in for some tough times that have nothing to do with the kids (other than continuing to raise them during said tough times) and so I am finally just relieved.

Fall Fun Continues

The Saturday Fall Fun continued this weekend. The entire LM family joined me and the Pumpkin at the Fall Harvest Festival at the local Farmer's Market. The Pumpkin was so tired when we finished that he was asleep before I started the car. He usually at least makes it to the parking lot but not this time. There was a band, farm animals, grown and baby ducks, roosters, a pig calling contest (the Pumpkins entry was a rather pathetic growl - I thought he could manage an oink oink but apparently not). I need to show video of my sweet baby's energetic dancing so here is my first try at embedding You Tube video. This will have to do for a post today since I have two separate very bad things to deal with before I can post about them. (Mom, if I wanted to talk to you about it I would have called you.)

In the meantime enjoy the antics of the kids (I am so lame that I didn't do the links right so the best way to see the video is to right click and then choose "Open in a New Window" otherwise you get kicked out of my kingdom and into You Tube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Kc6BWlTibY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSilHiliuMo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax4Q_z50ANc

Fall Fun

Fall has, at least temporarily, arrived in Virginia Beach, Virginia. It is a brisk 52 degrees right now and the high Saturday was around 70. Yumm. I love fall here. The Pumpkin and I celebrated the season change with LawyerMama and her progeny. PC doesn't participate in seasonal activities, and LM's T was working. So, my brilliant (it worked out okay - so I can still refer to it as brilliant) idea was to go to the local garden center with our boys and build LIFESIZE scarecrows. All the money ($20 each) benefited the local children's hospital. Win/win right? Well actually yes. I think all the kids had a good time. LM's Hollis is the best behaved three year old I know and he participated carefully; her Little H - not so much. He ended up strapped into the stroller and we still had a perfect stranger point out to us that he was eating a pumpkin/gourd. Hey, it wasn't a rock. The Pumpkin ran amuk in Pumpkin fashion. He removed/rearragned several seasonal displays of gourds (Little H was permitted to help until he tried to leave the premises); found "the back" where all the old lattices leaned precariously against the wall and tried to climb them; handed me the tons of hay we need to stuff our scarecrow and participated marginally in the choosing of the appropriate scarecrow clothing. He also found the glue bottle and so our scarecrow is decked out with an alarming array of fuzzy green round things. Still our scarecrow is outside scaring nothing, except apparently me when he catches the corner of my eye, and our dogs. And disgracing PC who doesn't think he suits the meticulous front yard that PC cultivates.

We also took all three kids to their first movie, Ratatouille. Caleb didn't make it through the last ten minutes but they were generally well behaved and a good time was had by all. We cheated, we took them to Cinema Cafe so they were served Pizza, French Fries, and Sprite, at a table while watching the move. All the kids were young enough to get in free so it only cost $1.50 each for me and LM.

So for all this cute fun you might wonder why there are no photos. Because LM and I both forgot our cameras - oops. Still here is one of the Pumpkin with his pumpkins and one with his scarecrow.

Hump Day Hmmm - Learning from Challenges

Emily from Wheels on the Bus is subbing for Julie Pippert today. Her Hump Day Hmmm assignment is to write about a challenge we have faced and how we have learned from it. Before I turn to that... Jenn, at Serving the Queens, has asked for help in sending words of support to a family that desperately needs them. Go here to help.


Knowing the challenges that Emily has overcome in her life, any challenges I have faced seem lame, tame and totally inconsequential. Still, I'll try this one...


My parents separated for the last time when I was four years old. They had managed, in those four years to separate thirteen times and to produce three children. They had a head start - I was born (two months early) five and a half months after they were married. We were all so little when they stopped living together that I don't think we sat around longing for reconciliations. We couldn't remember them ever being happy to be in the same room together. For various reasons, I usually lived with my dad. My mom had me from 6th grade until 9th grade and then I moved in with my dad semi-permanently.


At that time, when I fourteen, my dad was a one year survivor of lung cancer (which included the removal of most of his right lung). He was working again then. He worked nights. The first year I was there (it was still the summer before tenth grade) he told me that money was tight and if I wanted any new clothes for school I'd need to get a job to pay for them. I don't think he was being mean. I was a smart girl. I lied about my age and became a telemarketer. I earned my school clothes money and started 10th grade pretty happily. Over my 10th grade year things changed a lot at our house. My dad was declared permanently disabled and quit working. He took a lot of medications to help with his pain, he wasn't shy about sharing his medications with his friends, and our house became a sort of party place. My dad was only 34 or so at the time. He developed a frugal but fun life of lying in the sun, having friends visit constnantly, and partying. He didn't become a "bad" dad but he was different. Dinner was still made every night but he seemed to want playmates more than children. And there began the challenge... He didn't care if I went to school or not. He never graduated from high school and he'd lived a perfectly nice life (he never paid a dime in child support but he usually had a nice apartment with nice furniture, cool clothes, etc.). Maybe it had to do with the grim statistics at that time for surviving lung cancer. I don't know. In any event school was no longer a priority in our home. My only requirement for 10th grade was to pass driver's education. I had occurred to him that having a driver would be handy. I passed with a D and never really attended after the second semester.


So, as you can see, initially I failed the challenge. I did not insist on getting even a minimal education. But, like I said, I was smart. I passed the California equivalent of the GED without studying for it when I was 16 (the minimum age). I was free from any fears of truancy etc. By the time I was sixteen I had a job that paid more ($8.00 and hour) than many of the adults I knew (it was, by the way, the job my Dad had been too disabled to do anymore - data entry in a hospital on the night shift). I moved in and out of my dad's house a few times (with roommates and once, as a protest that he wouldn't make my youngest brother go to school, back to my mother's where there was a new step dad in residence - that didn't last long).


I enrolled in Community College several times (it is so cheap in California that you really don't have to have a comittment you can just sort of try it out when you feel like it). I never finished a course until I became pregnant with R. My dad had died by then. I was working full time and paying the rent and I had a paid off car and I decided to have the baby. Knowing I would be completely alone. And then I became serious about Community College. I took a couple of accounting classes (to help with my then job) and got As while pregnant. When he was a baby and I was on unemployment (my company fired me during my extended maternity leave) I passed a math class.

So after way too much introduction - my challenge was this. How do you a) value and b) achieve an education in an environment where it is not a priority, or a necessity, or even a goal?

I overcame this challenge by not really trying until it was important to me (ie. until I had kids to raise and finally realized that $10 an hour wasn't going to cut it). When it became important to me I did lots of things I would never have suspected I was capable of:
1. Collected welfare for two years while the State of California put me through my lower division college classes;
2. Resigned from the pilot welfare program that guaranteed my four year degree at no charge (including childcare expenses for both kids - with an allowance for study time) because I met a too young man who wanted to be a husband to me and a father to my fatherless children;
3. Left my kids and my husband to fend for themselves every Friday night and all day Saturday (after working full time Monday through Friday) while I pursued my paralegal certificate (BTW my husband learned to cook something other than mac and cheese from the blue box during this time - for that alone it was worth it);
4. Found a "lifetime learning" degree program from an accredited university that would help me to achieve a bachelors degree without too many attendance requirements;
5. After coming within 9 units of the bachelors degree described above just stopped caring/attending;
6. Entered law school (sans bachelor degree the very last year that was allowed in California);
7. Scored high enough on the LSAT to win a scholarship which covered 2/3 of my first year tuition in law school;
8. Took out a total of about $160,000 in student loans anyway;
9. Here is the big surprise (the only thing I really ever finished in my life) I graduated from law school and PASSED the California bar exam the first time I took it;
10. Nearly two years later (I am, after all, still the same person) filled out the final paperwork and was admitted to the State Bar of California.

So, here's the thing... if the challenge was overcoming any value placed on education in my home when I was a teenager did I really overcome this challenge by deciding (in my latish 20s) that an education was in fact extremely valuable? Usually I think so - and then my good friend LawyerMama will reference an author I'm unfamiliar with and I have to confess that, given my unorthodox education, I have absolutely no Humanities and have therefore never read said author. She usually replies that it wasn't a class assignment but LawyerMama was raised to be an overachiever. She is brilliant. When I first knew her I was certain that it was only a matter of time until she saw through whatever she thought I was and realized I was the uneducated girl I am. (She isn't at all like that but I didn't know it at first.)

At any rate, I am probably still overcoming this challenge, and failing to learn enough from it, since I have yet - four years after moving here - to successfully sit for Virginia Bar Exam. In the meantime, I am reasonably content in my work, I love my unexpected Pumpkin more than anything, and I am very happy in my home life. If that isn't overcoming a challenge I don't know what is... I just can't think of an adorable picture to go with this post so I'm afraid its all words tonight...