Yankees suck

This is very sad to say but the Red Sox may not make the playoffs this year. It is particularly upsetting for me, as i don't know a whole lot about sports ( like what the fuck is a penalty for "holding" "offside") but I know baseball. And I have a friend who can get free tickets. So if the red sox just fade off into the sunset this year- and who can blame them with all those injuries, must be bad karma, but Jon Lester is a cancer survivor, that should negate the bad karma- well, whatever, i guess i will just have to root for my other favorite team, Whoever plays the with yankees. Is it John or Jon? Who knows or cares.

I suppose it should be enough that in my lifetime the Red Sox won the World Series twice. I was at one of those games. However, I would like the future to report that the Red Sox won the World Series 5-6 times in my life, preferably with me as their team psych nurse. Or whatever i become later in life.

I have more to say but however am too tired. This is unfortunate, because with my memory, I will probably forget it by tomorrow when I am more awake. Well, just pretend I said something profound and it all rhymed. XXXXXXX

random thoughts as I slip off to sleep.

I am now the expert at downloading apps that I knew I would be. I downloaded some reference for psychiatric disorders and found out that there is a name for doing poorly at math. Not dumb. A medical term, although it is not really a psych diagnosis but a kearning disability.

So I expect that since I have a cool new phone, more people will call me. There is no basis in reality for this belief, but nonetheless I did believe it. But I get the same number of phone calls I did before.

At work tonight, I noticed that there seem to be a number of patients who first had cancer, then developed a psych issue. Maybe it was always this way but I never noticed it before. So, does cancer cause mental illness, or are crazy people more likely to get cancer? I think the answer to both of those is no, and when i say crazy, I mean a much more politically correct medical term.

I am almost done with radiation. I get to take a day off this week to bring Laura back to school. Obviously my radiation doctor is fine with this as he, too, will be bringing his kid back to NYU on the same day. This year, Laura has an apartment with a roommate, rather than living in the dorms and I am quite excited to see it. My baby has her own apartment!!!! How poignant! But even more important, I now have a free place to stay in NYC.

Good weekend, tired, just got out of work. Stayed in NH last night and went to see "The girl who played with fire" swedish subtitles and all at the cutest movie theatre in the world. Tickets cost $5.00 per person, drinks were a dollar and you sit in this little room in what seems to be a converted schoolhouse or fire station. A nice perk of small town living. A less than nice one would have been the chickent that flew up on the table as we were having dinner. OK, we were eating chicken, probably this guy's cousin, but that is no reason for that behavior. Plus I don't think chickens are smart enough to know that we were consuming Uncle Joe or whoever. They are just mean and wanted to ruin our dinner. Chickens suck.

Back to school, almost September.....this is the time of year you hear that song "the boys of summer" all the time- by the eagles or the atari's depending on what radio station you listen to. I am never ready to say goodbye to summer, but this means I will be done with radiation and one step closer to being a healthy cancer-free chick with a nice set of knockers.

You know, my life is going pretty well if I do say so myself.

playing chicken

This is so.funny. I am writing this on my phone because I downloaded an app! I guess it does not stand for appetizers. So. Neccesarily this will be short because this keyboard is about the right size for a bařbie doll. And it randomly makes foreign letters. I am at my sisters house in new hampshire. Here is a quote from her. "Laura, watch that front door so the chickens don't go into the house." Although normal in many ways, Peggy has chickens living in her yard.

APP-RICOTS?

Tonight, hanging around with my daughter, Laura, we decided that having faced a crisis like getting diagnosed with cancer, my attitude sort of changed for the better. Like I don't worry about stupid stuff any more. Apparently at some point in my life i worried about money and my job(s) and what people would think of me. Not so much anymore. Although, frankly, I wouldn't have minded if i learned this new view of life from one of those self-help books and didn't really have to get cancer, but as those irritating people say, it is what it is.

So yeah, now i know what is important in life. And fortunately i was able to indulge in one of those important activities tonight- something i haven't done enough of lately- Drunk Shopping. Well, that is what I used to call it when I was younger and wilder, now it is really more like have two glasses of wine and then shop. Just pick a nice shopping area with a good restaurant and voila! Laura and I headed out to South SHore Plaza which now has a fancy addition for rich people which we did not go to, as this was drunk shopping, not drunk shoplifting. Since there is now one thing on the menu that Laura eats there, she agreed to go to Legal Seafoods, which I really like even though it is a chain and even though there is something politically incorrect about it that Denise told me about, but i conveniently forgot. It wasn't violating child labor laws, I know that. So we had a very nice dinner, I had some nice wine- not robust, though. I draw the line there- and got some good hairdressing tips from the spikey haired waiter who was very charming and then set out to buy stuff.

Luckily there was not a car dealers at this particular mall, but there was a cell phone store. A real one. I realized a while ago that the most committed relationship in my life right now is with Sprint. Every time I turn around, i am locked into another two year contract with them. I have been with Sprint significantly longer than I was married. Well, think about it, if youu got charged a $300.00 termination fee every time you broke up with a guy, you'd think twice, right? So anyway, I have had cell phone envy for a long time, but I was just against the constant upgrading of these electronic toys as a matter of principle. Principles that evaporated after a few glasses of wine that is.

When I upgraded to my last cell phone, it was a big deal to have a phone that took pictures. Also, that phone was pink and now, sorry to say this but i am really getting sick of pink, the official color of breast cancer. So I walked into that phone store and said upgrade me to the best phone you have. (under $100.00, after rebate) OK, the clerk said, what will you be using this phone for? Puzzled, i said, oh, to call people. But I needed more. I really wanted to be able to have a full keyboard swo that when I texted, every word would be properly spelled out, kind of like when I type in this blog. And then she asked, did i want to download apps? At this Laura looked at me skeptically so I immediately knew that she questioned my app-downloading ability and decided to prove her wrong. "Oh yes," I said. I plan to download a ton of apps. Great, she said, and recommended a phone that kind of looks like an i-phone, but not really. But it is black. And I can go online, download music, use it as a sort of GPS, my most hated modern convenience, and of course download apps.

Instantly, all my contacts and pictures were magically moved on to the new phone. I had a lot of names in there. Oddly, i have no idea who half of them are. Like under Jack, i have, Jack, Jack-other one, Jackie, Jacky, Jackie mom, Jackie work, and Jackie tattoo. And i still have my old bosses old number listed under that very vulgar C word. Not cancer, the other one. And my ex-husband's work number listed under Dr. Evil. Well, at least I know who they are. So I guess I had that phone for a number of years during which I managed to become casually aquainted with a large number of Jackies. And Daves! Dave dave, Dave boat and Dave car, to mention only a few. I am going on about this because mainly the only thing I can do with the phone is look at my contact list. The girl explained things to me, but even at my best I have the attention span of a dog on crack. And Laura graciously excused herself to go try on clothes at H and M so that I would still be buzzed when it came time to pay for them.

I am eager to start downloading apps, but unfortunately I don't know what the fuck they are. APPS. Must stand for something. Apples? Applications? Apprentices? Well laura has promised to explain all to me tomorrow. In the meantime, i will try to figure out how to turn on the ringer. it is permanently muted. But this phone will just have normal ring tones. Guess the rock and roll lyric rings are a kind of last year, or maybe decade. I am way too cool for them anymore. Although it was always good for a laugh at work when suddenly "Psycho killer, qu'est-ce c'est" would blast out of the nurses station of the psych unit. (a special ringer only for crazy people who called me.)

Soon I shall be so high tech that I will not be able to stand myself. Or not. All my friends my age have these fancy phones but they can never figure out how to do anything with them. But I am motivated. I have a long term goal now. I am going to download the shit out of a bunch of apps, and I am going to like it. people will be saying, Oh you want to download apps? Ask barbara about it. She is the expert on all that stuff. World famous blogger and now app downloader. Who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks? Not that I consider myself a dog. My new hair is quite chic and complimented frequently by psych patients and gay men.

Relatives and relativity

Well, it's been a while since i wrote anything. Not writer's block, of course, but could it be possible that cancer just wasn't very funny this week? And i came to a daunting conclusion. A revelation, if you will. Cindy spent the week at the hospital with her daughter who fell on glass, got a terrible infection and needed surgery and mega-antibiotics. And Beverly is recovering from surgery all summer. And a nurse at work (a guy) is going to be out all summer because he has bladder cancer and has to get a whole new bladder made out of someother body parts, and something about they have to fill his body with TB bacteria, so his body will think he has tb. OMG, its not all about me!!!!!!!!!! Can that be true? People i am close to are going through way worse pain and inconvenience than me. Radiation IS a walk in the park for me, just have a sunburned un-boob, but I can see from the other patients at Radiation that it is not a walk in the park for everyone. A lot of the people are way sicker, just getting the radiation to prolong life, or make them more comfortable. So once again, I realize how lucky I am, although I never thought that this is something i would say having been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Of course I am less lucky than people without cancer, so if you were considering sending me an expensive gift or cash, do not change your mind because of what I said.

How many cockroaches does it take to turn a light bulb?

Today at work joking with a friend, she said something like, "I can't wear my jacket (that I had Borrowed) now because it has cancer on it." A lot of the people i work with have senses of humor similar to (although not Quite as sick as) mine. I can see that we may have conversations on a regular basis that would upset or even horrify other people who don't know us. Erin makes fun of me because I had cancer and am still talking about it, I make fun of her because she is deaf (well she has a hearing loss in one ear, but whatever.) Also i am quite bad about making fun of another co-worker and friend who was so excited about her new grandchild. She was showing pictures to everyone and they were saying typical baby things, and I saaid, "Maria, that is kind of an ugly baby. You should try to pick up some overtime and start saving for plastic surgery. In reality, the three of us love each other and the baby is kind of cute. Maria is a former oncology nurse with a very sharp, sarcastic (in the good way) wit. She totally understands the concept of cancer jokes. And deaf jokes, too, I guess.

So Erin came up to me later and asked if it had bothered me that she calls me Cancer lady and makes jokes about it. Since i had just explained at length to everyone in the room that Erin was actually mentally retarded as well as deaf, it surprised me that she was wondering if SHE had offended ME. But someone else that I knew a little less well had said hey those cancer jokes might hurt her feelings. And though I was surprised, it does seem that a reasonable person could assume that someone would not enjoy being called cancerous, or retarded, etc. And somebody recently posted on my blog that she did not think cancer was funny, just that it sucked.

Of course, cancer is not funny. Of course, it sucks. I do not enjoy it. I would rather not have it, or rather not have had it if I don't have it anymore and am just being treated for it. But I can't ignore it. It does not ignore me. So I make fun of it. Because then i can take it less seriously and then I can deal with it. Turning cancer into a joke, and my experience with it into a funny (in a sick way) blog is one of my new COPING SKILLS! Yes, that it what it is. And you know what? It works. Pretty much, cancer is going to do whatever it's going to to do to me- or not do- regardless of whether I make jokes about it or I get offended by people making jokes about it. Sometimes, people treat me with kid gloves and really watch what they say around me. The other day, Laura wanted to get a haircut but before she mentioned it to me, she said "Will it bother you if I talk about hair?" How cute? Of course this is the same kid who, along with her sister, decided about three months ago that since there was no cancer left in my body after all the surgeries and chemo, I did not have cancer and was no longer allowed to be playing the cancer card. Well, with them at least. They don't have the power for me to not be able to use it with other people. But I use that cancer card less and less. I go to work and take care of patients, rather than being the patient someone else takes care of. New people I meet talk about my cool haircut- like in any scenario, I would have the balls to cut my hair to 1/2 inch all around- and the lst thing they would think of was that the "haircut" is really a hair-grow from a bald chemo head. I don't feel like i have cancer anymore. I feel happy, healthy, young active and really lucky to have what I have. Also I feel really really tired all of a sudden. It was a long day at work. Sometimes I am grateful that the "illness" I had was in my body not my mind. People understand that so much better. That will be a topic for later.

CAKE!!!

Friday when I went to radiation, the waiting room was full of trash magazines. That is all I have to report, as I am now going to help Cindy cook. If you hear of massive food poisonings in Southeastern Massachusetts, that would be me.