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Mammo-What? Part 2 The Main Squeeze

Posted in women, WONDER, tagged First Mamm, Mammogram, Women on July 19, 2011| 6 Comments »

Well here it is … Mammo Day … and it is definitely NOT a ‘holi-day’.

I leave home with a few minutes to spare, so that I will have lots of time to find parking (if you knew where I lived, and how … quaint the hospital, you might be laying on the floor laughing). When I get my sorry butt into the hospital, and then get lost, before finding out where I was supposed to be.

As I followed the signs to ‘the clinic’, I was certain that everyone who I passed knew … that they knew where I was going, and what would happen there, and that they were whispering to others as I walked passed saying “she’s going for THAT appointment (because SHE is over forty!).” It was a very humbling walk down the hallway!

I reached ‘the clinic’ and opened the huge, enormous, heavy, squeaky (and any other adjectives that make you feel a sense of foreboding). The room I walked in to was pink … no, not just pink, Pepto Bismol pink … I cannot say that the color made me feel more at ease, honestly it made me feel rather nauseous!

The lady at the desk was all business … “health care card … fill out the top sheet … keep the bottom sheet.” I obeyed all of her commands (I cannot for the life of me remember the questions on the form … hum … something about age of first menstruation, any relatives with breast cancer, and a question that made me feel young … something about menopause 🙂 NOT ME), and returned her clipboard … I think it might have been special to her! That still provided ample ‘worry time’ as I awaited my turn (hum, is this what a man waiting to be called in to have a vasectomy feels like?).

Then, the instruction that brought me back to thoughts of the guillotine … “now step through that door, remove your bra, and put your blouse back on.” Sigh, this was the moment of door #1 (the change room), or door #2 (the exit) … and I grudgingly walked through door #1 … more pink (blech).

The change room reminded me of a retail clothing store … four ‘closets’, each with a curtain for a door, and a low shelf in each brimming with magazines. I followed ‘pink lady’ #1’s instructions … and waited … and waited. And listened … there was a screening being done on another lady … I could hear some of the instructions … ‘lay your purse on the chair’, ‘come over here’ and then the instructions mimicked the teacher’s voice from Charlie Brown comics.

But, I figured that since I could hear voices (even if they were mumblings), I could also hear shrieks, screams and cries! So, I developed my escape plan … if I heard cries, I was out of there (even if it meant racing down the halls of the hospital without a bra on under my blouse … I am sure that has happened in a hospital before). So, I flipped through my copy of People magazine, with my ears on alert for distress … nothing. Then, mere moments later, out came the patient … that was IT?

As she descended to her change room, I said, “so, you survived?” And she said, “yes I did … it is not enjoyable, but it is not so horrible either.” But before I could pelt her with more questions, THE DOOR (to the torture chamber) opened.

And I heard my name, spoken softly, and gently … but it didn’t quite feel ‘safe’ coming from ‘pink lady’ #2’s lips.

I was laying my purse on the chair, before she even started instructing me (I was hoping that if she thought I was a ‘keener’ maybe she would excuse me from this test).

There it was … the Mammo device/machine (aka, the instrument of mass torture and potential destruction). Except that it didn’t look so awful. My eyes were scanning it all over for the ice cold, metal paddles … there were none.

And the Mammo technician, her name wasn’t even Ingrid or Helga! And she was soft spoken, and rather nice.

And, it lasted, maybe seven minutes … tops.

And, it really was not so bad. I felt no pain (and I am a pain wimp … I was the sort of pregnant woman who made statements like, “I am in love with the epidural doctor”). I mean none. Oh, it was a teeny bit uncomfortable, but that lasted seconds.

In no time, I was sent back to my closet to re-dress, and leave. And really, the appointment was so quick, so painless that I felt no reason to even stop and ‘reward’ myself with a coffee drink.

According to http://www.worldwidebreastcancer.com (check out the ’12 Signs of Breast Cancer’) the main cause of death in women with cancer. In 2010 about one and a half million people, worldwide, were told they had breast cancer.

And ladies, touch your tatas! Learn how to do a self exam (ask your doctor, check out the web). Women, this is important! If we do not take care of ‘the girls’ who else will?

Did you know that early detection of breast cancer can mean cure rates of about 90%?

It is worth it ladies … for your family, for your friends, for yourself and the fulfillment of your life’s purpose. So, don’t shy away from this appointment.

Now to wait for the results …

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Mammo-What? Part 1 Anticipation

Posted in women, WONDER, tagged Fear., First Mammogram, Mammogram, Women on July 18, 2011| 3 Comments »

I really do not mind having birthdays. I do not even mind the number of birthdays that I have had. Heck, I am not even that upset about my mid-life body (it wasn’t that great in my twenties, and I am more physically active now, so it’s actually on an upward trend … which is humerus, since most of my body parts are on a downward trend …).

What I am not excited about is the invasion of medical tests on my body just because it is over forty!

All of a sudden, my optometrist checks for things like cataracts, and the need for bifocals. My dentist is on the search for recessing gums. And, when I went for that annual ‘woman’ appointment (which I last had done … hum, five years ago), the delightful, cheery, youthful nurse (grrr!) says, “oh, you are forty-two … did you know that women over forty are recommended to have a mammogram every two years?’ Now, how would I know that, I’m only thirty-nine, with three years experience?

So today, like an inmate on death row, heading to the guillotine, I will go to my very first mammogram …

When I got the appointment, I told my hubby that I was going to blog about it, and he said, “you’re not?” And his shocked, astounded, unbelieving question cinched it 😉 (oh, the life of the woman who likes to shock her husband), so, here is the fruit of his amazement!

So, as I have been planning and preparing (mentally) for this appointment, I have been having flashbacks (not hot flashes … that is still to come … and when they do, I will probably blog about them) and nightmares.

The flashbacks have been to those mass emails about mammograms … that are ‘supposed’ to be funny. Come to think of it, they were funny … when I was too young to need to have one! Now their ‘humorous’ messages, make me feel sick to my stomach. Stories of having your ‘girls’ moved and molded like silly putty, between two cold, hard paddles of metal. Moving my ‘twin peeks’ into positions and for lengths of time that God Almighty NEVER intended them to be. I am feeling palpitations of Nascar speeds in my heart just thinking about it! What if, like my mom used to say about making funny faces behind people’s backs, that my bodacious tatas get so squeezed and twisted that they stay that way forever! What if my ‘hi beams’ become ‘low beams’?

Then there’s the nightmares … they are pretty much the same as the flashbacks, but at night, and more sweating is involved (and hubby is not involved in the sweating, other than him dialing 911, because he thinks I am having a heart attack, or seizure or that I’ve lost it … mentally … which, I have to say, I think maybe I am).

But, I am woman … and I will ‘suck it up’ because that is what we women do.

This, although unpleasant, is something that provides detection that women in years past would have, and did, die for.

So ladies (and sensitive male readers, who really do want to know what a woman thinks about the realities of her life), check back tomorrow, for the continuing saga of Mammo-What?

This must be done, and it could be worse …

I could be a man going to an appointment for a ‘digital’ check-up!

Mammo What Part 2 The Main Squeeze

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The Walking Stripper

Posted in WONDER, tagged nature, walk, Women, Wonder on May 18, 2011| 4 Comments »

Hello, my name is Carole, and I am a stripper.

(now you say, ‘hello Carole’)

But, it is true. And the stage I strip on? It’s the pathway I walk. Now, don’t head to my local trail to see if it is true? (if you know what I look like, this will make you NEVER walk that trail again). I am a seasonal stripper … winter, spring and fall. And I am only a stripper under certain cool weather conditions (the monsoons of the ~~Wet~~ West Coast).

So, here is my repertoire …

I hate to be cold when I walk, and, as I’ve been aging I feel cold whenever I start a walk. So, I wear layers. There’s the under layer (the ‘unmentionables’), followed by a long sleeved breathable shirt, followed by a hoody, followed by a water-proof jacket, followed by a toque, followed by mitts or gloves. And that pretty much covers it … or me.

When I start walking I am cold. It doesn’t seem to matter what the temperature is, when I start out, I am cold. So, I am wearing all my duds, and am zippered up as high as the zipper will zip. And, I usually tuck my hands up, into the sleeves of my jacket.

After about 10-15 minutes, I am feeling my blood flowing! So my hands emerge from my sleeves, and my zipper get unzipped, but only a respectable amount … I don’t want to be thought of a some kind of loose, hussy, walking stripper.

Now, if it is raining I am limited to how much I can strip. After all the water-proof jacket is my only protection against the dreaded wet. But, if it is simply cool out, my whole attire has the possibility of being eliminated.

So the mitts get pocketed … as cold as my hands can be, they also warm up to toasty at a pretty quick speed. The toque gets pocketed at the same time … I do admit to rarely wearing the toque (as I am a ‘head sweater’), but thought it added to the story 🙂

After about 20-30 minutes of walking I am fully warmed up! My muscles have given up and started to work (without stiffness, pain, and crying out for mercy). It is now time to remove the jacket, and tie it firmly around my waist. Then the zipper on the hoody falls to that respectable place (just above my cleavage, well that’s what is was before I got old … now it’s more like the great divide … but I digress).

It doesn’t take long before I am over-heating again (this phase usually makes me think of mid-life hot flashes … and hope that a cure is discovered before they actually affect me). So, feeling less respectable, the hoody zipper gets lowered below ‘the girls’ (the ‘great divide’ is experiencing flooding with all this increase in body temperature).

By now, I am at the halfway point of my walk, and am sure I am leaving the sweat equivalent of a trail of breadcrumbs. So, as my beast is squatting to release her excess fluids, off goes the hoody! And, along with my water-proof jacket, it gets tied around my waste.

Now, despite all my stripping, I am a sweaty mess! And, I now look like a pack mule!

Definitely not what you think of when you hear the word stripper!

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Drinking in Their Scent

Posted in Love, The Hubby, The Kids, WONDER, tagged Adventure, dog, Life, Love, poo, Scent, Waiting, Women, Wonder on April 19, 2011| 3 Comments »

I have experience the longest four weeks of my life, with hubby, our son, and youngest daughter away on an adventure! The feeling has been similar to the expectancy of the birth of a baby, or the waiting for your wedding day! And, with all three of these times of waiting, they culminate with embracing, words of love and drinking in their scent, which you know so intimately as belonging to someone who is yours.

Kind of like … dogs. You know, you take your beast for a walk, and are walking towards another person and their beast. Both people say ‘hi’, and the beasts … well they go for the sniff and lick … seriously, THAT is something I can’t wait to get to heaven and ask God that most theological of questions … ‘why do dogs sniff each other’s butts?’ But I digress.

But really, the familiarity of a scent, that is the evidence of an intimate relationship.

To inhale their scent, that, to a mom, says they are mine. I remember one other time when hubby was away, and, on the phone I told him that I missed his scent. His response was to pass gas, so I could at least hear it … we are so from two very different planets! Believe me, there are some scents that, as a woman, I could never miss! (I know this is a universal woman thing too … a few weeks back, my daughter says, ‘Mom, I so miss having girls with me … my brother had a chili dog today … and I’m confined to the car with the effects of it!’).

bad smell

We may know many people, and we might even know their cologne, or perfume, or hand lotion, or even soap, but to know their individual scent … your relationship has to be closer, more physical, more intimate.

When I go to the East Coast to visit my family, it is not just my mother’s embrace that holds me to her, but her familiar scent. I cannot imagine anything forcing the memory of the scent of my mom from my mind.

I am sure I could be blindfolded, and still be able to identify those most intimately connected to me, by sniffing their necks (okay, it would also be easy to identify hubby, as his is covered with whiskers).

Now, don’t get me wrong, we are not just sitting around sniffing each other. We will talk, we will hug (we are ‘huggers’), we will play, we will travel, we will see sights, we will go to the beach (I wonder if the South East Beach smells like a North East beach? I swear I can still be one hundred miles from the East Coast, and I can smell it … home). But those first moments, those first hours together, it is our sense of smell that was and will be most keenly reunited.

“Everyday, you make me smile.

Everyday, you make me glad to be a mother.

Everyday, you make a memory I’ll never want to forget.

Everyday, I’m more thankful than the day before that you are my little boy/girl.

Everyday, I smell your hair and touch your skin

and wonder

how I ever lived my life without you.

Everyday.”

Unknown Author

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Re-Boiled Tea

Posted in canada, FAMILY, GOD, life, Recipe, women, WONDER, tagged Aging, Fondness, Future, Life, Mom, Recipe, Scottish, Tale, Tea, Women, Wonder on April 14, 2011| 1 Comment »

Once you read this tale, you will be shocked to know that my grandmother is from Scotland … the land of tea (and shortbread … mmmmm, who could ever forget the shortbread … I wonder how long I would need to walk, to work off a good shortbread cookie?).

So my mother is my grandmother’s daughter, therefore, mom has about half of her life-giving blood donated by the nation of Scotland. Truly, good tea-making should be in her genetic code. But, it’s not!

Here is my mom’s (or is it mum’s) method of making tea …

First: One must use Red Rose Tea Bags

Next: Boil water, while, pouring out ‘yesterdays’ tea, rinsing the pot (must be Pyrex)

Next: Set pot on the wire ring, on the burner

Then: Place two Red Rose Tea bags into pot.

Then: When the water is boiled, pour into the pot.

Next: Turn burner to ‘low’ and allow to steep … for many, many minutes!

Finally: Enjoy

But, for my mom (of fine tea-making Scottish heritage), that is not the end of the story. No, MY mom doesn’t start the process all over again at lunch (or, as is said on the East Coast, ‘dinner’), and then at dinner (on the East Coast, known as ‘supper’). MY mom makes a full pot (just for herself, as dad is a strict milk-drinker) in the morning, and then re-heats, by re-boiling, the morning tea for lunch (dinner) and dinner (supper).

YUCK!

What self-respecting Canadian, of Scottish heritage, would make such a brew? (and what daughter, of said Canadian-Scottish heritage TELL of it?). Why it is just wrong, and in some countries, might even be viewed as criminal behavior.

All that said, some mornings (and only in the mornings, because I know of the dishpan quality of the tea as the day grows older), I so wish I could sit at her kitchen table (no one, in their right mind, on the East Coast would sit anywhere else for tea and a visit), and watch her go through her morning tea-making routine, and listen to her talk of all the people we know (what else do you talk about on the East Coast, besides other people … talk of the weather could cause people to sink in a hole as deep as those of us on the West Coast are wallowing in), and sit, in the same seats we have sat in since I can remember, and have our tea … together.

And when I am old (er … my body is already headed on the irreversible pathway), and my mom is gone, you know what I will remember, with fondness, every time I see a wire burner ring, or Red Rose Tea, or a Pyrex tea pot? I will remember my mom’s re-boiled tea, and the great memories I have of sitting in ‘our’ seats at the table in her kitchen, ~~gossiping~~ talking fondly ( 😉 ) about all those we know. Maybe re-boiled tea is not so bad.

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Retreat!

Posted in GOD, life, Nature/Creation, women, WONDER, tagged Retreat, Women, Woner on April 3, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I just got back from a retreat … a women’s retreat … ahhhhhh it felt good.

According to definitions.net, retreat is:

-the act of withdrawing, as into safety or privacy (we withdrew to a beautiful spot, where we were ‘away’ from it ALL)

-an asylum, as for the insane (it was all women, and, after a certain time of night, and a certain amount of chocolate, this definition might fit)

-a retirement or a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation (we listened, we prayed, we meditated, we learned)

-to make a retreat (hum, well we did ‘retreat’ from doing cooking, cleaning, jobs, families, groceries, etc)

-to slope backward; recede (any sloping backwards was the delightful going back to ‘giggling like school girls’ … but, since there were school girls there, maybe we were not ‘receding’ after all)

-to draw or lead back (we were drawn back/reminded what is most great, Beginning and the End)

All that to say it was a time away, with just females, having a blast, in all the best of ways. And I am so thrilled that they would invite and include me.

And man, in the near future, have I got a hiking story for you!

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Walking Alone in a Wonder-Filled Life-Part 2

Posted in canada, GOD, life, Nature/Creation, The Beast, women, WONDER, tagged Again, Change, Competition, Contrasts, dog, walk, Women, Wonder on March 24, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I said I wouldn’t do it, but I did.

I thought I would hate it, but I didn’t.

What a great walk in the sun I had with the beast yesterday, AND I didn’t get eaten by a bear! (see my previous blog if this makes no sense to you). The sun was bright and warm, the path was littered with friendly people, and I could walk at my own pace.

At my own pace … walking alone.

Walking alone I was able to set my own pace 🙂 . I didn’t have to deal with my hubby’s excessive speed …

Oh boy, I suppose I need to fess up about the excessive speed issue. This is where I could use a 12 Step program, because, you see, I am innately, wholly, aggressively competitive. When we walk together hubby does start the walk at speeds that could be clocked at Nascar. But, once my joints are loosened up (numb enough that I feel nothing anymore) the monster within me takes over. This monster cannot be led anywhere! It is a strong-willed, arrogant, Type A personality within me that has, not a need for speed, but a need to be in the lead!

Sometimes, while hubby and I are a-walkin’ and a-talkin’ I even hear voices from the monster within! ‘Carole, he’s gaining on you; Carole, don’t let him pass you; Carole, you are stronger, move your keester.’ It is very distressing! But, alas, I have digressed yet again.

Walking alone, there was an absence of the monster within, there was no competition. I could try to compete with my beast, but, lets face it, she’s got the endurance of a race horse. Even my monster within knows better than to try to out-walk a 55lb., 6-year old canine. So, without hubby, I didn’t get as far down the trail, as when he is there.

Walking alone, my joints didn’t cry out to Jesus for relief in the first 15 minutes of the walk.

Walking alone, I had the opportunity to see and drank in the beauty around me. When you are walking like a race car, there is no journey, only destination.

Walking alone, I had to buy my own blended ‘Naked Juice’ drink after the walk!

Walking alone, I had to ‘scoop the poop’ … wait a minute, nothing has changed here!

And that is where this two-part entry began … walking alone. It was a day of contrasts. There were good differences and bad, walking alone. But, with hubby or alone, the path remains the same. The bends are still there, the hills are still there, the shady trees are still there (the stinky outhouse is still there). What changes is my experience of the path.

I hope that the experience of walking alone will help me to see afresh how wonder-filled this path is.

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