Filed under: Uncategorized
I said it would be January before I was completely “whole” again, and that turned out to be on the money. So here I am, free of underwire bras and the associated bulges. I wore a blue velvet gown with no bra for our Obamarama party! Still have scars to heal — one more than the other after the complications — but it’s all ok. Doc said he could do a little nip ‘n tuck to speed things up, but i don’t care to have another stitch anywhere for a long, long time.
And the REALLY good news is that I was able to get traffic school for the ticket I got the day after “the boob explosion.” I sent a picture. It was graphic. It worked. I’m happy.
Now with my reduction and Bush out of office, there is far less boobage in the world.
Filed under: D-Day
An update to the D-Day saga…
Breakthroughs! Not only have I “gotten a load off” with this reduction, I’m feeling a freedom I’ve never had. I can just be. No self-consciousness about being too large, too much, too uncomfortable. I can just throw on whatever shirt I want and it fits! Some are even too big now. What a joy.
Last week I started sleeping on my stomach for part of the night.
We went to the Alabama Hills on a photo workshop and I climbed all over the place. (Yes, I’m sore, but the good kind.)
Thursday night I slept without some kind of bra.
Friday I saw the doctor for my weekly visit, and he said I don’t need to come back for three weeks!
That doesn’t mean I’m healed yet. Just getting much, much closer.
The key seems to be a high dose vitamini regimen my yogi/Sikh/chiropractor Santokh put me on three weeks ago. Santokh consulted with his associate, a homeopathic physician, about what could be done to speed up healing. Dr. Barker said Vitamin A was the key, along with E, C, fish oil, and a natural analgesic. And within days of starting a five-drop-a-day regimen of the A (about 55,000 units), 3,000 units of C and I’m not sure how much E, along with the fish oil and analgesic, an ever so slight skin began to form. Instead of being raw, the center of the wound began to heal, then more patches. I’ve cut back on the quantity now, and I feel almost normal, even though I’m still changing dressings twice a day. The improvement is that it no longer hurts to do so. And today I got a massage and could finally lay on my stomach. My back needed some relief after nearly three months of recovery. And my legs needed relief after all that climbing!
So there is hope. I’m wearing racer back sport bras. Shelf bra tanks. Not an underwire in sight. No unsightly bra bulges. No discomfort. I’ve still got a bunch of my old bras. Maybe I’ll burn one or two–for the right of 50+ women to do so, as well as any other woman who wants to “get a load off” and feel the joy of personal freedom.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Rachel Weiner- Wall Street Journal
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of
the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under
President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor
General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently
associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently
John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee
ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the
McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the
several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter,
he said that chief among the reasons for his decision “is the choice of
Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis.”
Thank you for the voice of reason.
Filed under: D-Day
I guess I’m experiencing the “good pain”—the pain of healing. Doesn’t feel good. In fact there are times I want to scream: when peeling the dried gauze from my raw, well, what is it? It’s not skin yet. It’s just exposed tissue. I guess this is why I haven’t written too much about this lately. Some days it’s just too much reality.
Filed under: D-Day
So, been a while since I updated you on D-Day progress. How do you spell SLOW????
Geez, this feels like it’s going to go on forever. But there is progress. Three weeks ago I was afraid to bend too much for fear of popping another vessel. Now I’m doing yoga, Yamuna ball rolling (thanks Lupa), using Pilates bands, hiking up the foothills with my dog (and my mom-in-law’s while we’re babysitting), and doing nearly all normal things except sitting in a hot tub. Ours is broken (again) anyway, so perfect timing. Funny, I popped that vessel just as the financial tornado hit us and I feel like I’m recovering at the same pace. Want some gory details? Ok, here goes.
Actually, the worst thing is that I still have to change the dressing twice, sometimes more, a day. It doesn’t make me weep anymore, I just do it and get on with things. Some days it does stick and hurt more than other days, but the wound itself is shrinking, the gap is closing. Three weeks ago it was 9cm by 8. Last week 7×7, today 5×5. I was surprised today because to me it looked no different than last week. It’s very strange to sit in the middle of an exam room, bare your breasts and just watch the doctor staring. Can’t get away from the boob staring. Then he’ll reach over and squeeze to see if they’re softening up. Feel like a horn in a clown routine. I just want to squeak out, “Honk! Honk!”
Last week Doc said I would heal faster if I switched back to the wet cotton gauze, instead of the oil. Considering the pain I had been in, he didn’t want me to experience that again. But I felt strong enough to try it this week. I alternated between the two and it seemed to speed things up. But today I have been battling constant itching and stabbing pains. Apparently this is all normal (???!!!) so I’m going zen with it. Santokh (my yogi chiropractor) muscle tested me last week for Traumeel tablets, a homepathic analgesic with arnica for bruising, etc. My body said yes, so I’ve been taking three a day, plus extra vitamins. I just want to be as healed as possible by the holidays. Thanksgiving is what, 5 weeks away? maybe 6? That’s my target. I’m just cryin to wear a pretty new bra. I’ve banned the surgical ones for the time being. Doc says I don’t need to wear them so off to the rubbish with them. The miracle is I can wear those great comfy shelfbra tanks or stretchy cami’s now. What a miracle.
But now the really hard part: dropping 15 pounds. Sigh.
Filed under: Uncategorized
Ok, on the D-Day front, so to speak, healing is progressing, albeit slow.
We’re at 6-1/2 weeks now. The non-challenged side is nearly completely healed. The problem side is still raw, tender, itchy, irritated, and driving me crazy. I just long for the day of not having to wear these friggin surgical bras. One brand is pretty funny, though: “Dr. Fillgood.” Geez.
Filed under: By the People
White House claims exclusive responsibility over its records, NOT!
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/20/cheney.lawsuit/index.html?eref=rss_latest
Filed under: By the People
Thank you Gloria.
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 10:31
——————————————————————
> Gloria Steinem on Sarah Palin
>
> Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even
> the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican
> Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice
> president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have
> picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so
> women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the
> ‘white-male-only’ sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton,
> who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
>
> But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a
> boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and
> opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been
> about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for
> women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too
> many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.
>
> Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no
> way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin
> shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and
> deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that
> has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential
> candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that
> opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that
> Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be
> like saying, ‘Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.’
>
> This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on
> issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the
> job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t
> say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the
> spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero
> background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37
> years’ experience.
>
> Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month
> about the vice presidency, she said, ‘I still can’t answer that question
> until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every
> day?’ When asked about Iraq, she said, ‘I haven’t really focused much on
> the war in Iraq.’
>
> She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and
> she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a
> $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s
> campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income
> or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long
> that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not
> lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration
> habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on
> ‘God, guns and gays’ ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is
> filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
>
> So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out
> of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between
> form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues;
> the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of
> reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a
> woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq;
> someone like Texas Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of
> Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs
> who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against
> Women Act.
>
> Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every
> issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that
> creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global
> warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s
> wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves ‘abstinence-only’
> programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and
> abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to
> shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state
> school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation;
> she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500
> million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports
> drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has
> opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly,
> only younger.
>
> I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle
> Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does
> it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels
> but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just
> echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade,
> she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest,
> she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a
> human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it
> also protects the right to have a child.
>
> So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James
> Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, ‘women are merely
> waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,’ so he may be voting for
> Palin’s husband.
>
> Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains
> from this contest.
>
> Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most
> women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist
> majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to
> support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite
> government into the wombs of women.
>
> And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs
> than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national
> stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home
> until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on
> their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their
> children.
>
> This could be huge.
Filed under: D-Day
Found a new blouse this morning. One that I had bought pre-D-Day and tucked away and forgot about. I was thrilled to find it today because I felt much better and wanted to look it, too, without any fuss. The top was perfect — knit, loose, swingy, a little crochet neckline. Just enough to perk me up.
Got to the doctors without incident or speeding ticket. I’d already changed my dressing after my shower this morning just so I could check on things. I was worried about the blood from last night. All was well. Doctor said so, too. I didn’t hear “this is the worst it will be” because it is already better than Wednesday. He said in a week it’ll look completely different. Like I’ll have skin where skin’s supposed to be, I assume. And he said the pain would lessen. I only took Aleve today so I could have more energy, but I took a lot of it. It’s still uncomfortable and I get an occasional YOWEE pain.
I called Steve and told him the good news and we went to lunch at Taylors, the best steak house in the area. Tried to nap when I got home but the neighbor had construction going on, so every time I dozed off a drill or saw or hammer would jump into action waking me up. So now it’s time for the darvocet and sleep. I feel like I’ve turned a corner. I’ll be back to work Monday.
Filed under: D-Day
Wednesday, Sept. 10
I’ve gone to the date format because it’s the only way I can keep track of all this.
After we got home from the doc Tuesday, it was time for chinese food (Egg Roll Express in Pasadena) and passing out. I took my meds and went to sleep, hardly waking til morning. All looked ok when I got up, so I just washed my hair before going to the doctor. (I can go a week without a shower if I have to, but the hair has to be washed daily or it becomes a study in oil.) I figured as long as I was washing my hair, I might as well do my roots with the 10minute root touch-up. No strain in doing it, no stretching involved. All worked out fine.
But I was tired after that and needed a short nap. When I woke up I got my things together and realized I didn’t have any cash for parking. I’d spent it at the Elks. Rats. Steve had left very early for work so I couldn’t get any from him. I tried calling but he didn’t answer. He’d said something about a meeting at Universal so I figured that’s where he was. But now I was running a little late if I had to stop at the bank. I got in the car (no hopping, jumping, running, etc., just getting into the car is plenty of effort) and headed out, intending to stop at the bank. Unfortunately a Highway Patrol officer had a different idea. I turned down the Casitas Ave speed trap and was had. I was just out of sorts and didn’t even realize it was a 25 mile an hour zone, and my mind was on my boob and the doctor and making sure I had money to get out of the parking lot. See how your mind can just screw you up? Not being able to do my usual yoga routine over the past few weeks has left my mind atwitter. So the motorcycle cop so cleverly hiding in the shade walks out to the middle of the street and waves me over. I think he’s going to tell me about something going on in the neighborhood and to be careful. No. He’s giving me a speeding ticket. I crack. I nearly pulled off my shirt to show him my pain, but just broke down crying instead. He didn’t care. Gave me the damn ticket as I’m on the phone with the doc’s office telling them I’ll be late. They must think all I ever do is cry. I feel like I’m 12. I want to punch the cop, but, of course, it’s physically impossible to do so.
So I had to pull myself together and get to Burbank, which I did, without further incident. The new gauze worked wonders and doc said all was going fine. “This is the worst it will be,” he said again. And repeated that it will heal up and look perfectly normal. Finally the nurse says, “I have some pictures that will show you what he means.” “Please, bring them, visuals are good!” Sure enough, photos of another woman with both breasts in this condition and both turned out beautiful. That was what I really needed to see. I’m a photographer, show me the proof! You know the cliche…a picture is worth a thousand words. But I’m not showing pictures here, you have to put up with my words.
The rest of the day was incident free. Calm. Relaxing. Got a massage to unhinge my neck muscles and stimulate circulation, and saw Santokh, my chiropractor. No problems during the night.
Thursday
Today I showered and changed the dressing myself without problems but I felt irritated all day. I did some small errands, checked email, dealt with the cable company (for the third time this week) and puttered. But just as I was preparing for bed, which I haven’t made it to yet, I checked my dressing. One of the large absorbent pads felt odd. When I tried to remove it, it stuck. I tugged ever, ever so gently, and the bleeding started again. Doesn’t seem to be like Tuesday’s incident, but very disheartening. It’s good that there’s blood and circulation, but really not happy with it leaking out. So instead of seeing the doc at 10:30 tomorrow, I’ll probably be there at 8:30. Now I just have to relax enough to sleep.
