So- It's Friday, 2 days after having the lump removed from under the scar on my left breast. The scar was from a lumpectomy I had in 2009 for breast cancer. How pissed off was I when I felt a lump last week? Right? Ok and scared, like really really scared. So this past Wednesday I went in and had it taken out. Not full on surgery; meaning I was not knocked out. They gave me a local and did it while I was awake. Let me tell you- that freaking needle the dr stuck me with HURT like hell. I yelled a couple of very bad words. And then he stuck me again! Now the nurse told me that it numbs the area in less than 20 seconds, so he might have done it again but I didn't feel it. He told me beforehand that it was gonna hurt and he was right. He then told me that he could not blovk the sounds or the tugging feeling I would feel. I did not want to see the needle or any blood. I kept my head turned. But the noise- yeah I almost threw up. But I knew if I barfed it would really hurt. So instead I started talking to the nurse so I wouldn't hear it or think about the tugging I felt.
The nurse was so nice; she held my hand while I got stuck with the needle and I asked her to hold my hand again as he started working. The noise was like a scraping- that's what made me feel sick- makes my stomach a little woozy just writing it. So I told her about the place I hike. I told her about the section where it becomes mostly redwood trees, more than any other part of the path. It's a short patch, and as it changes there's this kind of overhang made by a bending tree and one that had fallen onto to the bended trunk so I sort of pass underneath and I always say goodbye to that part of the trail. As I come into that part of the trail I say hi to my family; it reminds me of being a kid and going camping with my parents and my brother & sisters. I love that part of the trail.
So I still felt some of the tugging; but I just kept talking. The whole thing only took about 15 minutes. The doctor said it was a solid "thing". I asked if it had a tail or root or was it just a "thing". He said no root, just a "thing". I asked if it could be a cyst- he answered he didn't cut into it- that's what pathology is for. He said he didn't know what it was. He told me that it can take 10 days to find out, but that recently he's been finding out much sooner, and as soon as he knew, I would know. So- that was 2 days ago. I'm hoping by this time next week I will be writing how happy I am that it's not cancer. So my skin is sore. My arm is sore, my breast, really very close to the top- it's like my chest, is sore. I used ice packs the first day and one yesterday. I haven't hiked. My hike is pretty strenuous, especially at first, the first 15 minutes are straight up and windy and bumpy, so I decided to wait until Monday.
Ha ha of course since I'm not working out I thought that ice cream every day is a good idea! Last nite we went to this place we heard has good trip tip sandwiches, they were out- so yeah they're very popular. But then we went to another place where we already tried the burgers and they were great- and they had a very good tri trip sand....with french fries....and later- ice cream. The first day however I was beat. And I woke up the next day kinda depressed. I notice that happens to me when I get cut into (hmmm should I say duh, or ha ha). But I'm better now. I talked about my fear. I talked about being in the now, right here right now. So I'm ok.
In other news, our dog Sam hurt his back leg. He's been limping since last weekend and we took him to the vet on Monday. For only $325 (ouch!!) she told us he has bad arthritis. Yeah we know. So yesterday and today we took him over to Lake Mendocino so he could swim. He loved it. Actually I didn't go yesterday, I laid on the couch and read and felt sorry for myself ha ha. But I went today. Everardo fished a little, I read a little but mostly watched Sam. There was also a turtle hanging out on a stump poking out of the water; I tool his picture but it's on my phone so I can't put it on this post but I will next time. Sam is improving slowly; he has to take tramdol for pain, and only started eating almost normally yesterday. He hates the couple of steps up to the front door and the one step down going out thru the sliding glass door to the back yard. We're thinking about making that step into a ramp. Our yard is funny; the front yard is sunnier and Sam likes the front lawn. I bet come summer we'll be happy that the back yard is cooler since we keep hearing that summers are very hot here. Of course after Mexico- I think we can handle it. Down there we had no air conditioning or heat, and in one place no hot water for 6 months. So bring it on.
I went to get milk tonite and was thinking about Mexico. We were always smelling the milk- every day as soon as we brought it home from the grocery store. In Penasco, sometimes it went bad after one day so we started buying quarts instead of gallons. Then we figured out that the trucks that brought the milk to the stores near out house were not refrigerated trucks! Ha ha so delivered not cold then put into the cold storage in the store. Hmmmm. Down in Playa Ventura we never knew if there was going to be milk in the closest store. Some days they had milk but no cheese or bread. Or the had bread but no milk or cereal. Forget lunch meat ha ha. Costco was in Acapulco but that was 2 hours away and we never bought milk there. There was a Super Che a little over an hour in the other direction (south in the mountains), and we started going there almost once a week. It things you don't think about here, stores being out of basic stuff. Ha ha and the bank! Sometimes the atm had no money in it. If we got to town and saw alot of people around the bank, then we knew that somebody heard the money truck was coming, so we could wait if we wanted. If we wanted to do more than atm, then we had to drive an hour north up to Cruz Grande, and there was always a line out into the street to get into the bank there. In Mexico you need the bank for your utilities; the telephone company would tell you how much and then you would go pay it at the bank, then bring it back to the telephone company. Oh and when a new school semester was starting- don't bother going to the bank! The students all pay at the bank for their school tuitions. Not at the school. That one took us a while to figure out- we learned it in Ensenada.
So many things we take for granted here. I still carry toilet paper in my purse; in Mexico you have to. There may be public bathrooms everywhere but they NEVER have paper in them. And honestly, we traveled around Mexico alot, and I have to pee alot, so I peed behind boulders, bushes, cactus, the truck, behind building where the public bathroom was soo disgusting I just couldn't ha ha. So I peed my way across Mexico and always had paper with me. This habit has stuck with me. The paper I mean, not peeing on the side of the road ha ha! Yeah when I was in Florida on my sister's houseboat with the plumbing messed up- peeing in a bucket was fine with me!
Another thing was going barefoot. I never went barefoot in Mexico and you would think I would all the time. But no. Our first place, down in the tropics- there were scorpions all over the place. So the ground was too hot outside for barefeet, and inside the scorpions. That's where I also learned to not put my hand in places I couldn't see, like way back on a shelf or in a cupboard. Then we moved up to Sonora, another hot place, and again the scorpions. So when we got to Baja, actually I never saw a scorpion in the trailer and in the last few months I did actually start going barefoot in the house. Then we moved to the hillside and saw so many tiny scorpions- well I never went barefoot again! And I didn't go barefoot in the ocean either. I always wore sandals or old tennis shoes.
Now we live in a house with wall to wall carpeting everywhere but the kitchen/dining room. I always look for my slippers in the middle of the nite when I get up to pee. I always put them next to my bed so I can just swing my legs down into them. I don't need to, but old habits, right? I sometimes just wear socks in the house, and as it gets warmer, who knows, maybe barefoot it will be. I miss Mexico. Alot. And I learned so much. I'm so grateful for everything we have. I try hard not to be so wasteful, with water, with food, with clothes. I find myself thinking- well in Mexico we.....ha ha I try hard not to say it.
So anyway in a few days I'll know where I'm at. I'll share again. I'll try to post the picture of the turtle. OH- so this week hiking I saw a turkey, a rabbit, a deer, 6 salamanders and a banana slug. Viva
The nurse was so nice; she held my hand while I got stuck with the needle and I asked her to hold my hand again as he started working. The noise was like a scraping- that's what made me feel sick- makes my stomach a little woozy just writing it. So I told her about the place I hike. I told her about the section where it becomes mostly redwood trees, more than any other part of the path. It's a short patch, and as it changes there's this kind of overhang made by a bending tree and one that had fallen onto to the bended trunk so I sort of pass underneath and I always say goodbye to that part of the trail. As I come into that part of the trail I say hi to my family; it reminds me of being a kid and going camping with my parents and my brother & sisters. I love that part of the trail.
So I still felt some of the tugging; but I just kept talking. The whole thing only took about 15 minutes. The doctor said it was a solid "thing". I asked if it had a tail or root or was it just a "thing". He said no root, just a "thing". I asked if it could be a cyst- he answered he didn't cut into it- that's what pathology is for. He said he didn't know what it was. He told me that it can take 10 days to find out, but that recently he's been finding out much sooner, and as soon as he knew, I would know. So- that was 2 days ago. I'm hoping by this time next week I will be writing how happy I am that it's not cancer. So my skin is sore. My arm is sore, my breast, really very close to the top- it's like my chest, is sore. I used ice packs the first day and one yesterday. I haven't hiked. My hike is pretty strenuous, especially at first, the first 15 minutes are straight up and windy and bumpy, so I decided to wait until Monday.
Ha ha of course since I'm not working out I thought that ice cream every day is a good idea! Last nite we went to this place we heard has good trip tip sandwiches, they were out- so yeah they're very popular. But then we went to another place where we already tried the burgers and they were great- and they had a very good tri trip sand....with french fries....and later- ice cream. The first day however I was beat. And I woke up the next day kinda depressed. I notice that happens to me when I get cut into (hmmm should I say duh, or ha ha). But I'm better now. I talked about my fear. I talked about being in the now, right here right now. So I'm ok.
In other news, our dog Sam hurt his back leg. He's been limping since last weekend and we took him to the vet on Monday. For only $325 (ouch!!) she told us he has bad arthritis. Yeah we know. So yesterday and today we took him over to Lake Mendocino so he could swim. He loved it. Actually I didn't go yesterday, I laid on the couch and read and felt sorry for myself ha ha. But I went today. Everardo fished a little, I read a little but mostly watched Sam. There was also a turtle hanging out on a stump poking out of the water; I tool his picture but it's on my phone so I can't put it on this post but I will next time. Sam is improving slowly; he has to take tramdol for pain, and only started eating almost normally yesterday. He hates the couple of steps up to the front door and the one step down going out thru the sliding glass door to the back yard. We're thinking about making that step into a ramp. Our yard is funny; the front yard is sunnier and Sam likes the front lawn. I bet come summer we'll be happy that the back yard is cooler since we keep hearing that summers are very hot here. Of course after Mexico- I think we can handle it. Down there we had no air conditioning or heat, and in one place no hot water for 6 months. So bring it on.
I went to get milk tonite and was thinking about Mexico. We were always smelling the milk- every day as soon as we brought it home from the grocery store. In Penasco, sometimes it went bad after one day so we started buying quarts instead of gallons. Then we figured out that the trucks that brought the milk to the stores near out house were not refrigerated trucks! Ha ha so delivered not cold then put into the cold storage in the store. Hmmmm. Down in Playa Ventura we never knew if there was going to be milk in the closest store. Some days they had milk but no cheese or bread. Or the had bread but no milk or cereal. Forget lunch meat ha ha. Costco was in Acapulco but that was 2 hours away and we never bought milk there. There was a Super Che a little over an hour in the other direction (south in the mountains), and we started going there almost once a week. It things you don't think about here, stores being out of basic stuff. Ha ha and the bank! Sometimes the atm had no money in it. If we got to town and saw alot of people around the bank, then we knew that somebody heard the money truck was coming, so we could wait if we wanted. If we wanted to do more than atm, then we had to drive an hour north up to Cruz Grande, and there was always a line out into the street to get into the bank there. In Mexico you need the bank for your utilities; the telephone company would tell you how much and then you would go pay it at the bank, then bring it back to the telephone company. Oh and when a new school semester was starting- don't bother going to the bank! The students all pay at the bank for their school tuitions. Not at the school. That one took us a while to figure out- we learned it in Ensenada.
So many things we take for granted here. I still carry toilet paper in my purse; in Mexico you have to. There may be public bathrooms everywhere but they NEVER have paper in them. And honestly, we traveled around Mexico alot, and I have to pee alot, so I peed behind boulders, bushes, cactus, the truck, behind building where the public bathroom was soo disgusting I just couldn't ha ha. So I peed my way across Mexico and always had paper with me. This habit has stuck with me. The paper I mean, not peeing on the side of the road ha ha! Yeah when I was in Florida on my sister's houseboat with the plumbing messed up- peeing in a bucket was fine with me!
Another thing was going barefoot. I never went barefoot in Mexico and you would think I would all the time. But no. Our first place, down in the tropics- there were scorpions all over the place. So the ground was too hot outside for barefeet, and inside the scorpions. That's where I also learned to not put my hand in places I couldn't see, like way back on a shelf or in a cupboard. Then we moved up to Sonora, another hot place, and again the scorpions. So when we got to Baja, actually I never saw a scorpion in the trailer and in the last few months I did actually start going barefoot in the house. Then we moved to the hillside and saw so many tiny scorpions- well I never went barefoot again! And I didn't go barefoot in the ocean either. I always wore sandals or old tennis shoes.
Now we live in a house with wall to wall carpeting everywhere but the kitchen/dining room. I always look for my slippers in the middle of the nite when I get up to pee. I always put them next to my bed so I can just swing my legs down into them. I don't need to, but old habits, right? I sometimes just wear socks in the house, and as it gets warmer, who knows, maybe barefoot it will be. I miss Mexico. Alot. And I learned so much. I'm so grateful for everything we have. I try hard not to be so wasteful, with water, with food, with clothes. I find myself thinking- well in Mexico we.....ha ha I try hard not to say it.
So anyway in a few days I'll know where I'm at. I'll share again. I'll try to post the picture of the turtle. OH- so this week hiking I saw a turkey, a rabbit, a deer, 6 salamanders and a banana slug. Viva
