How is everyone doing at the halfway point of this week?
I am
having a day. My head is spinning. My mom called me at work yesterday
to tell me that she went for her annual mammogram and exam, and the tech
noted that she was lopsided. Told her to mention it to her doctor
afterward. My mom didn't think much of it, but the doctor was very
concerned that it's a "diffuse" tumor, not the kind that's a clear lump
on a mammogram, but kind of spread out all loosey-goosey. She's
scheduled for a biopsy Friday morning, and she asked me to go with her
to the surgeon, so of course I am. She's freaked out. I'm freaked
out. My brother is freaked out. And because it's not a discrete lump,
it's not the kind of thing where they say "Oh, it's probably just a
cyst, we'll do a biopsy to confirm"--her doctor said that in her
experience, this diffuse tumor is "the most likely finding."
So
that news arrived around 4:00 yesterday. I am trying to stay off of
Google until she gets the biopsy results, otherwise you can go down so
many rabbit holes that are probably best left alone for now. The
not-knowing stage sucks, because it feels like every possibility is
open, from "Whoops, my bad, you're fine" to how to explain cancer to
Wooz. And DH, bless his heart, is trying, but denial is his thing. He
meant well, but he was all "When was her last mammogram? See, nothing
that bad could have happened in a year." (Uh, it can if it's
aggressive. And really, whenever there is something wrong, there is
always a first time they find it.) "It's probably not cancer, you don't
have a family history of breast cancer." (We don't. Neither do a lot
of women who are diagnosed.) And in one breath he's all "Whatever you
need me to do so you can do what you need to do, just let me
know, I'll take care of it." and in the next, I'm trying to hustle Wooz
out the door for swim pictures and he's acting like he's the first
person to ever put a swimsuit on a toddler. ("I can't do this, how do
you get it over his head?")
And regular life goes on, and there
was drama at swim pics. Wooz managed to drop her form in the pool,
because Wooz. I had to go get a new one and find a pen, and while I did
that, she got out of line to twirl around and chat with her friends.
So she went from like 5th in line to roughly 30th, which made my head
want to explode. Then she finally got her turn, smiled, the
photographer asked to see some teeth, she kept smiling with her mouth
closed, the photographer made some kind of lame joke, Wooz scowled, the
parents looking on laughed, and Wooz burst into tears. Excellent. Which also held up my plan to get out of there, because I couldn't exactly leave her like that.
So
I get her settled down and lined up for the group pic, hit the road,
and DH calls following DS's parent-teacher conference. And apparently
they think DS is extraordinarily intelligent. Which isn't a humblebrag
or anything, I do think my kids are smart, but a year ago his teacher
was saying he needed all kinds of therapy which it turned out he
didn't. Different teacher, but my point is, I'm taking the genius-level
thing with a grain of salt. I would be happy with regular-smart. But
the curriculum coordinator was talking about special programs and
testing him into the gifted charter school for kindergarten, summer
physics camps with Clemson, etc. So right or wrong, they think he's super smart. And I feel like a halfway-terrible mother, because I'm
like "I'll deal with that next week."
The curriculum coordinator
did suggest going to Goodwill and getting old analog alarm clocks and
stuff for him to take apart, so I think I'll make that my lunchtime
errand today. Is it too soon to start drinking?
�