Let It All Hang Out

"In the stillness and the darkness, realization soon began to supplement knowledge. The mere knowledge of a fact is pale; but when you come to realize your fact, it takes on color..."
--from Chapter 6, "The Eclipse," Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court--

Sometimes when your life has already been turned inside out for a while, a bit of a scare doesn't seem to faze you much at first. At least not until you wake up in the middle of the night before a big test that you cannot study for but hope to pass all the same. And the worry starts to gnaw at you inside until the morning comes.

Last Sunday, Easter smiles and surprises swept away another kind of funk. It was the kind that makes you wonder about that old saying "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I should know by now that there are some arguments I can never win and that certain naysayers will have their say no matter what. Anyway, that funk dissolved in the Easter sunshine.

Funk #2 came out of nowhere Thursday morning in the form of a phone call from the local mammography center. The radiologist was not satisfied with an image of the right breast taken a week ago. Would I be kind enough to visit the main facility in Pensacola and submit to even more torture? Sure, be glad to. See you Friday morning.

When I used to transcribe medical reports for a living, the tedium of a long day was relieved occasionally by careless docs. The official rule to transcribe exactly as dictated gets ignored when you hear something like this in a SOAP note: "the patient's pus-sy wound looks much better today." Sorry, doc. I'll substitute "purulent" for your choice of words.

I wonder about that fine line between narcissism and reflectiveness. Who really has the right to decide where it falls?


"But it is a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done...."

--from "The Eclipse" as above--

I am in good shape after all.

Addendum: Please, ladies, (yes, and even gents) do yourself and your families a favor and get regular health screenings. The NIH reports that fewer women are getting mammograms these days. So what if it's a little uncomfortable? There are many organizations that can assist with the cost of testing and even treatment, if that's what stands in the way of getting help. And it often does.