Blatherings (but, hopefully, not blithering)

If you look in the upper right corner of this blog's home page, you'll see that I subscribe to Sitemeter.

Sitemeter allows me to see my visitors' servers and their locations, so I can see whereabouts my readers are from, except in the case of aol, which comes from another planet. (Relax, it doesn't give me your name or even your home town, so you've got nothing to worry about.) It also tells me the search terms if you came to my site from Google.

A lot of people are looking for the meaning of the phrase "Ripeness is all". I picture students the world over swearing their way through an English paper, trying to figure out just what the bloody heck that means. That's why I post the two pages from my former blog, Ripeness is All, under the Sitemeter logo.

I'm thinking I ought to send out emails to all the English professors in the world, so they can identify plagiarized materials...and shame on you, by the way, if you're teaching students whose native language is not English, for sicking those words on them! I was an English major, elected to Phi Beta Kappa in my junior year, and I only figured it out a few years ago.

Anyway, I was reminded again of the need for that readiness this week, when my oncologist called to tell me the results of my 11/23 PET/CT. The liver and bones are still clear, and there's no sign of anything in the lungs or brain, the other common sites of breast cancer metastasis. There's just a little...spot in my stomach, probably an ulcer or gastritis, my onc said.

I flipped. I was ready to deal with a report of a new metastasis, as I had dealt pretty calmly with the news of the first spread to the liver, but I was not ready to hear this. I think he would have let it go if I had not pressed him, but when he realized how anxious I was, he promised to talk to one of Hartford Hospital's gastroenterologists. I reminded him to make sure it was one who accepted Medicaid so I could avoid the fiasco that occurred earlier this year when I was looking for an endocrinologist (my blood glucose was over 300 and it took me two months to get an appointment).

I got a call the next day from the gastro, and I have an endoscopy set up for December 7th. In case you don't know, that's where they stick a tube with a little camera down your throat and look at the inside of your stomach, remove land mines, and biopsy any questionable areas. So I'll know for sure. I'm much better when I know for sure.

I'm embarrassed and sorry that I wrote a rather self-pitying email to the main breast cancer email list and the breast cancer metastasis list. I came to my senses the next day. The fact is that it's unlikely to be cancer, and the other fact is that I'll simply have to deal with it if it is.

Who cares? It's Christmas!

May