Monthly Archives: June 2014

Mammograms – Why?

health, humor, , , , , , , ,

I had a mammogram today and it raised questions in my mind. Not about whether mammograms are a good thing, despite the new study in the British Medical Journal that said they don’t really help. My mother had breast cancer and a mastectomy. She survived. A dear friend had a lumpectomy. (Digression: By accident, it almost became a complete boobectomy. Her breast survived.)

When my doctor told me to schedule the test, I  admitted to him that I don’t do the breast self-exam thing every month. I told him I couldn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, not even after another doctor gave me the fake boob with the different sized lumps to practice on. “My breasts are weird and lumpy,” I told him. “All women’s breasts are weird and lumpy,” he replied. Good to know. And, yes, there have been plenty of volunteers who’ve offered to help. So don’t even go there.

I dutifully scheduled the test, especially since I think that now, thanks to the ACA, insurance has to pay for the whole thing. (Further digression: The thing that caused the most resistance to the ACA, in my opinion, was letting its opponents get away with calling it “Obamacare.” That and not emphasizing that it wasn’t health care reform, which scares people. It was insurance reform, which only scares insurance companies.)

(I think I was working up to making a point somewhere. What was it? Oh, yeah, mammograms. Questions. That was it.) My questions were not about the actual test, but about the process.

When I entered the elaborate medical photo booth, the tech asked me, as usual, to remove my clothing above the waist and put on a cloth gown with the opening in the front. She told me to open the door a bit when I was ready.

Leave me alone with nothing to read and I start thinking.

I said to myself, “Self, why does she want me to put on that extremely fashionable gown when she’s going to see my weird, lumpy breasts anyway?”

When I discussed this with my husband later, he said that some people are modest.

“About what?” I asked. “They know the tech is going to see their boobs.”

I thought some more. “When the mammogrammers snap the pics, the techs ask you to uncover one breast at a time. Why is that? Are modest people okay with exposing one boob to a stranger, but not two at once? Plus, the tech touches them. If they’re going to be modest, isn’t that the bigger issue?”

I was on a roll. “And that whole leaving the room while I change is silly. They could save time – and laundry bills for the gowns – if they just said, ‘Strip to the waist and stick ’em in the machine.’

“They should reserve that delicate sensibility crap for first-timers. Everyone else just wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. Am I right?”

My husband said he didn’t know, which is probably true, since he’s never had a mammogram.

So, what’s the take-away here?

When I have a mammogram, I already know that someone will see and touch my breasts. And I’m okay with that.

But if I see my pictures on the Internet, I’ll really be pissed.

UPDATE (IRONY ALERT)

The mammogram I was so flippant about revealed a cyst, which has gotten larger. Tuesday I go for a follow-up mammogram and ultrasound. Even more people will see my breasts, and I’m still OK with that.

The Hive Mind and Signal Boosting

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,

Lately I’ve been involved in a number of grassroots efforts, crowd sourcing, and increasing the bandwidth of various projects (other people’s, not my own).

It’s the modern version of networking. I can’t increase the sales of a friend’s book or a favorite local restaurant, but I can let people know where to find it. I can’t rescue a stranger from poverty or foot (paw?) the vet bills for someone else’s cat, but I can contribute something. I can’t speak authoritatively about a lot of subjects, but I’m a whiz at knowing where and how to find information.

In a way, it’s like the Six Degrees of Separation (or Kevin Bacon) theory – if I don’t know how to do something, one of my friends or one of their friends does. It’s one of the reasons I’m on Facebook, despite its many flaws. It’s similar to a giant “Phone-a-Friend” lifeline from the old version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

“The hive mind” is just another way of saying “brainstorming.” “Signal boosting” is tech-speak for “spreading the word.” “Crowd sourcing” is the modern way to “pooling our resources.”

It’s an answer to the question “But how can I, one small person, make a difference?” And it’s a way to “stand on the shoulders of giants” to see farther. Come to think of it, it’s a lot of the reason we have WordPress blogs.

If you’re interested, here are some groups that do crowd-sourcing:

Kiva.org (rotating micro-loans to help alleviate poverty)

DonorsChoose.org (funding for individual teachers’ classroom projects)

Kickstarter.com and GoFundMe.com (fundraising for creative projects or personal needs)

I’ve made donations through all of these and never regretted it.

And while I’m at it, here are a couple of friends of mine whose signals I am boosting:

TomSmithOnline.com and thefump.com, for those interested in Dr. Demento-style music (FuMP = Funny Music Project)

Rejectedprincesses.com, neglected kick-ass women of history and myth who would never make it in a Disney movie

What organizations or projects would you like to promote? Just leave a comment below. No waiting for the beep.

 

 

Cats, Etc.: Friday the Thirteenth Edition

cats, funny things, , , , , , ,

This being Friday the 13th,  black cats are on my mind. I’m not superstitious, so neither the date nor the cats bother me, but they do bother a lot of people.

A pass-along this morning said that black cats (and black dogs) in shelters tend to be overlooked and are killed disproportionately. Another common rumor is that black cats are adopted at Halloween by Satanists (or teenage wanna-be Satanists) to sacrifice in horrible rituals.

Snopes.com says the evidence is inconclusive on that last point, although they also mention people who want to “rent” black cats as party decorations. I don’t know if this actually happens, but I doubt that it actually works. Cats of any color are more likely to spend a Halloween party behind the sofa or ralphing on the snack table than posing prettily in a tableau of pumpkins. (Digression: Hairballs are pretty grody, so I guess they could be considered decorations, if you’re the horror-fan sort of party-giver.)

I don’t believe cats are bad luck, because I don’t believe there’s any such thing as an all-black cat. As far as I can tell, they are required by law to have at least ten white hairs somewhere on their bodies. Show-offs prefer the chest area.

But I have a confession: I have never owned a black cat. (Digression: My mother-in-law has. No comment.) We did once have a lovely tuxedo cat named Shaker. She had, in addition to the white chest, white whiskers and adorable little white feet. She had a lot of dignity, but then spoiled the effect when she jumped off my lap at the vet’s, made a break for it as fast as her tiny little feet would carry her, and ran headlong (bonk!) into the glass door. It was so sudden that she couldn’t realistically pull off the “I meant to do that” look. Nice try, though.

We did have a black guest cat (a foster) that I named Joliet. (Digression: Here’s the story. I had a black friend named Darryl. I couldn’t call the cat Darryl because she was female (Darryl Hannah notwithstanding). My friend Darryl came from Joliet, IL, so I named her Joliet in his honor. It didn’t matter, because everyone misheard it as Juliet and called her that.)

We might have kept Joliet, but she proved to be a brazen thief. (If she were he, we could have called him Joliet Jake. Or Darryl, I guess, except Darryl wasn’t a thief. Never mind.)

One night we were eating in front of the TV and had a large steak on a plate on the coffee table. Joliet did not choose the typical cat ploy of sniffing daintily at the edge of the steak and making the pitiful “nobody-feeds-me” face. She swooped in and grabbed the whole thing, then raced across the living room with it. From our vantage point it looked like a steak with four feet and a long black tail fleeing the scene of the crime. We recovered the steak, washed it off, and ate it anyway. We were not so well off that we could afford to waste a steak.

(Digression: Once I was cruising the cheap meat (reduced for quick sale) section at the grocery. A guy, obviously embarrassed, picked up a couple of steaks and said, “I feed these to my dog.” “Yeah?” I said, tossing some into my cart. “I feed them to my husband.”)

Anyway, we decided that Joliet and another family would be happier with each other. Looking back, we may have made the wrong call. She never brought us any bad luck. We just needed to train her to steal steak from other people and bring it back to us. Then again, trying to train a cat is difficult enough, never mind trying to train one to give away stolen meat.

I’m a General(ist). You May Still Salute.

education, , , , , ,

The other day I was talking with an old friend about my time at Cornell. I was concerned/regretful/annoyed that I had wasted my time there. There was so much more I could have done if only I had been properly prepared and focused.

Digression: He was excited. “Hey! I had sex with an Ivy League coed!”

Cornell had what they called “distribution requirements,” meant to broaden a person’s education by forcing them to take classes outside their major and even outside their College.

Digression: They also made everyone learn to swim and/or pass a swimming test. I cheated. I can still barely swim.

Of course I was an English major in the College of Arts and Sciences. Here’s what I took in addition to poetry and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Creative Writing and all that stuff:

Astronomy (with Carl Sagan)

History of Science in Western Civilization (with L. Pearce Williams)

Communications

Bee-keeping

Russian

French (Literature. In French.)

Intermediate Archery (twice)

Linguistics

Cinema

Wine-tasting (now there’s a surprise)

And a bunch of other stuff that has been lost that in the Swiss cheese that is my memory.

And what use is all that? Except for being on Jeopardy, which I never have been? Or laughing hysterically at The Simpsons when Ned asks that alternatives to Darwinian evolution be taught and Principal Skinner suggests, “Lamarckian evolution”? What possible career could all that prepare me for? I’m not an expert in anything.

Surprisingly, I realized, it prepared me for exactly the career I have: writer and editor.

I can’t write or edit for specialized or technical journals, but I can write and edit the hell out of general interest material and educational fodder for developing young minds.

I know just enough biology to explain how vaccines work.

I know just enough politics to tell the differences between socialism and fascism.

I know just enough art to differentiate Pointillists and Cubists and Impressionists.

I know just enough Greek and Latin roots to explain words like “apnea.”

I know just enough religion to tell you what “original sin” is. (Hint: It’s not sex.)

I know just enough history to tell about Catherine the Great. (Hint: She didn’t die having sex with a horse.”)

I know just enough psychology to tell you the differences between grief and clinical depression.

I am a generalist. My education may not have been deep, but it sure was broad. (Hint: Do not call me a “deep broad.” I know just enough martial arts to make you regret it.)