The usually alarmist posting style of WebMD let me down when trying to diagnose The Mc at 3am Sunday morning.

What their timid article about our friend FP should really say is: “Those suffering from food poisoning will frequently clutch their stomachs, beg for death and run unexpectedly towards any object that might serve as a receptacle for their projectile vomiting.”

It should continue on to say that people in the throes of poisoning can be quoted as saying “oh God…oh God… oh God… oh God…honey, it hurts … oh God… oh God…”

That would have made it much easier to diagnose, which is key in treatment. I mean, I could treat him for something else, like lice, but I’m not sure the desired effect would have been reached.

With regards to treatment, the article should list the following:

Things you should *not* do:
- Allow the barfer to consume liquids within 30 minutes of last explosive episode
- Give the barfer Emotrol, Pepto or Immodium

Things you should do:
- Call your health insurance nurse line after the second “episode”. Do not wait until five hours later when the sickling is finally ready to accept defeat against the unseen
- Take copious notes so you can mock the ill when they’re – un-ill.

Nothing says “love” and “healing” quite like getting a laugh out of your PFL’s misery…then sharing it on teh interwebz.

If you’d asked me Tuesday morning if I was going to get completely naked and lay on a white vinyl table in the middle of a room full of other naked women (of various shapes, sizes, and grooming habits) to be washed by an older Korean woman in her underpants, I’d have laughed with a mouth full of coffee and ruined your day.

But you didn’t, and I didn’t expect it, which makes it all that much more delightful.

I can’t being to explain why I went for it after my girls already had – especially when they described what would happen. By no means am I a prude (exhibit a: skinny dipping with some of my other girls at The Hostel in the Forest), I do have some body issues and don’t typically prance around in a swimsuit let alone nude in front of perfect strangers.

But there I was. As the day I was born – plus or minus my extra bits – in the middle of the whirlpool/steam area, trying to catch the eye of one of the older women working the scrub tables before I completely chickened out. “Maybe it’s a sign. I shouldn’t do it. You can’t walk out now, you’re already here. C’mon, pull it together.” That inner monologue is bossy and sassy!

Two Russian women beat me to the punch, and I clutched the hand towel that was theoretically supposed to cover my nether bits a little tighter. I eked out my request and was ushered with a nod into the steam room for “two minute” by a woman in a black bra and granny panties: my scrubber.

Okay.

If she’s okay, I’m okay.

I’m OKAY.

I did my time in the blazing hot steam and was collected by my scrubber, quickly ushered via hand gestures to a half-walled off area with eight identical tables and told to lay down. “Face down?” I ask, she nods and slaps the table.

Oh, God. Don’t hurt me. (Someday, after lots of therapy, I’ll write about the most abrupt, jerky, slappy, pokey massage I’ve ever had a half an hour before.)

I’m doused with a bucket of warm water, then another. I’m reminded of jumping off a cliff in Jamaica and being told to keep my legs tightly together. Too late.

For the next thirty minutes she scrubs me with mitts and soap, nudging me to turn onto my side, lifting my arms over my head, nudging me when I needed to turn again. Scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing.

At some point after rolling onto my back I realize: I haven’t been cared for like this – physically – since I was a child. I haven’t had someone carefully cleansing me, washing me and renewing me. It occurs to me this would have been a perfect compliment to what Malinda did for me over the course of 5+ years, with once a week visits to her office. Boxes and boxes of Kleenex, and hugs, and painful recollections and purging.

This wasn’t some shi-shi spa salt scrub bullshit, this was the real deal. This was rough without being brutal, it allowed me to be vulnerable without being ashamed, and it allowed me to rejoice in someone else taking care of me in ways I (clearly) couldn’t take care of myself.

The charcoal sauna may have ridded my body of toxins and the massage may have loosened more up (note to self: drink a GALLON of water tonight with all that red wine) but the body scrub? Ridded me of so much more, for which I have no words.

I never ever ever post from work but this time, I can’t help it. It’s all I can do not to run a lap around my building right now (which, btw, would hurt like hell given the state of my boob)

For those of you who are not following me on twitter or my friend on facebook, I just got the call from the Dr. – I’m free and clear! Back to the old every 6 months routine unless I find something else funky in the meantime…

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I remember sitting on his bed when he was barely strong enough to get himself out of it, hunched over more than usual and in sweatpants and a tee that hung off him like he was a walking hanger.

He muttered “see what eating all that broccoli got me?” and started with his contagious belly laugh. Pancreatic cancer had taken his hair and his body, but was no match for the twinkle in his eye or his sense of humor.

I suppose a several years back when I went through this the first time I thought if I did this and that I could prevent more icky bits from growing in my boobs. Walking the 2-day, spending a little extra on the license plate, running more, raising awareness. Eh. *shrug*

I was wrong. Like dad with the broccoli.

I’m still certain it’s nothing, and I’m positive everything I did was right and for the right reasons and resulted in GOOD, but when they say they want you to come back for a biopsy you can’t help but think “well, here we go again…” and after a few minutes of “shit shit shit, stupid body! Why don’t you ever listen to me!? I told you I didn’t want anymore of those!” you take it for what it is: an adventure and a message and an opportunity.

So I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing. Living with as much gusto as I can manage, loving as freely as I can, listening too closely to the spontaneous part of my spirit and generally being boisterous and outspoken.

I’m good, I’m good. Shaken maybe, but not stirred…and by Monday afternoon I fully expect you’ll see me bouncing around saying stupid crap like “merely a flesh wound!” then we’ll get the reports that confirm all is well in boobieville and nothing will have changed, you see, because I’ll still be who I was and who I am: a pain in the arse with a big mouth and an overly ripe mushy heart who needs to write more.

I took the week of our move off work. I was floating on fumes and nary a wisp of patience or kindness when it finally arrived. Months of living out of boxes after a year of living in suburban hell, movers that were four hours late, cable guys that were two hours early, boxes and kittens and fur balls like tumbleweeds dancing across concrete had taken their toll. The Mc didn’t have enough PTO saved up to unpack with me and wow, what a blessing. I needed time to nest, recharge, reacclimate and reengage, Mr. Sulu! Preferably solo Sulu.

After threve bijillion trips from the apartment to the condo to the apartment to the condo with my not-as-much-cargo-space-as-you’d-think filled to the gills with plants, shoes, and piles of items I failed to pack for the movers in what I can only describe as stress induced delusions of “I can get that-itis”, I decided I’d stop. I’d stop on the way to the condo and treat myself to a little mani-pedi action at a place I’d just been introduced to to a few months before.

After a delicious soak and with warmed silk eye pillow and buckwheat neck pillows in place, I was reclined in an anti-gravity chair and starting to check out. My technician and I chatted while she massaged and trimmed, then she fell silent.

“Huh.”
“What is it?” I whipped my eye pillow off as she lifted my foot this way and that, angling it in the light, sqinting her eyes and saying “huh” again.
“I’ll be right back.”

She gets up and scurries off, leaving me to lift my foot to my face, mortified, blushing wildly and counting my blessings that it’s 2pm on a weekday and I’m the only one in the salon.

A few moments later she returns with reinforcements. An attractive blond, presumably the salon manager hmmmed and grunted while examining my feet. The concensus: some sort of fungus and it wasn’t athletes foot.

I yelped and whimpered and whines the likes of Nellie on Little House on the Prarie seeped out of my lips with words like “I’m the cootie customer!” and “I have funky feet!”

I was horrified. I’m still horrified. You’re probably horrified. The next time you see me you’ll stare at my feet, unable to think of anything else. It’s happening to me every morning.

Luckily I have an awesome GP about my age who also grew up in Anchorage, and my visit started off with a good ten minutes of Palin mocking. Ahhhh a slice of home right here in the hot hot.

Short story far longer than it should be, whatever it is isn’t anything special or that scary. I have a fancy lotion to make the dead skin on my feet slough off and I need to stay hydrated, and maybe not wear flip flops in the rain in Atlanta anymore…though he tried to convince me that didn’t have anything to do with it. Psha. Like he’s a doctor or something.

In the last few weeks we’ve said good-bye to a family member, looked at half a dozen houses and had a fight (we never fight).

I’ve been allowing myself to be pulled like taffy from event to event, obligation to obligation.

Last night I watched the sky light up over downtown and made a vow to myself to take it back: my time misses me. My legs miss stretching and hitting the pavement, my mind misses long nights of physically (not mentally) exhausted sleep. My fingers miss typing and spilling out my cares, worries, observations and frustrations.

Like doing the right thing, it’s really that simple – but rarely that easy.

My doctor moved without telling me, which could have been terribly problematic if they’d left the building and I couldn’t read a directory. In its origional spot on the ground floor, there was now a cosmetic surgery practice. The opportunity was trying to present itself but my boobs haven’t hit my navel just yet, so I went on up to the fifth floor.

While filling out my paperwork in holding pen #1, a woman tried to check in at the desk. Her voice was unnaturally soft and overly pleasant with a twinge of snotty. I couldn’t help but judge and chuckle when they informed her she was in the Breast Care office and the cosmetic surgery office had moved to the ground floor. *snicker snicker* As she walked out I looked up, I’m not sure she’ll ever need to come back, because those weren’t her boobs.

Moving in to holding pen #2 I took a quick inventory and surmized that 90% of the women there were surly. Surly, angry and self important. Laptops, PDA’s, scowls. I took turns knitting, updating my twitter status and watching the women roll back out to the pen from their ultrasounds and mammograms.

It was a lot like American Idol auditions. I was Ryan Seacrest, listening at the door and trying to guess what would happen next. Which women would come out with watery eyes? Would they come bounding out with smiles and a golden ticket to LA? Which women were here for the first time? Which ones – like me – had done this so many times they’d fallen out of practice with their self-exams?

Thankfully, I saw no tears today. Not mine, not theirs.

What I did see was the piece of equipment doing the squishing telling no one in particular via a digital display I probably wasn’t meant to see that there were 20 newtons of something or other going on. Whiskey tango foxtrot? Translated tonight via my other boyfriend The Google, I now know that:

1n = ≈ 0.22481 lbf of pound force.

That doesn’t sound like much. x20 = 4.4962 lbf of pound force. Hm. Still not much, but then I wasn’t a physics major like someone else who sleeps in my bed.

It also says that the force of Earth’s gravity on a human being with a mass of 70 kg is approximately 687 N, which is getting closer to describing it if you use poetic justice as I’m prone to do – it’s like having the a little over a third of the earth land on your knockers.

What this means is that it hurts a little. Mostly though, I observed that this time I actually felt the skin on my neck being pulled downward as she closed and tightened the clampomatic 3000. I asked her if that was a sign of my age and she laughed. The women in that office laugh at all my smart azz comments and I have to wonder: am I that funny (answer: yes) or is every other woman that comes through so serious that it’s all business and no levity? That’s no way to fight cancer if you’ve got it, I’m here to tell ya.

Long story longer, I have more cysts in addition to a few oldies but goodies, but there were no tumors on todays report and I get another 12 months to get my habits back: self exams and harassing girlfriends about their self exams.

That means you. Or your wife or PFL or sister or mom. Gittagittin.