Doctors, Dentists, and Icicles

When I was a 3rd year veterinary student, I was taught a lecture

on breast cancer. In people. It was one of a few lectures that were given to us about human medicine with the knowledge that we would likely be asked about said topics from time to time. We learned that breast cancer has both genetic and phenotypic risk factors (larger breasts have higher risk.) African-American women have the highest risk (partly due to genetics, partly due to size) and Asian women have the lowest risk (again, partly genetics, partly size.) After this particular statement in class, my male classmate Andy (who sat next to me all that year and was one of my very good study-buddy friends) leans over and says to me "Les, you've got NOTHING to worry about!" Thanks, Andy. Love you. Mean it. :)

No woman in my family has a history of breast cancer. I also do not fall into the 'size' risk category, either. :) But, I have had a nodule for a couple of years that has been growing a bit recently and becoming painful. I also have 2 friends that I care deeply about that have recently undergone treatment for breast cancer and a former roommate that is struggling with ovarian cancer. These women are not that much older than I. So, at my yearly 'woman' doctor visit I mentioned the nodule and my doc and I agreed that an ultrasound was in order. She and I both felt that it was likely not anything to worry about, but an ultrasound would be due diligence.

I had that ultrasound yesterday. All is well. It is a fibroadenoma - a benign mass that grows and hurts and is completely harmless. I can have it removed if it bothers me too much, but there is really no need to do that at this point. But with everything else that has been going on, it's nice to breathe a sigh of relief about this.

Yesterday was my day of doctor's visits. I had the ultrasound at 9, a chiropractor appointment at noon, and a dentist appointment at 3. I ran errands and hung out at the clinic in order to fill the time between appointments. I was most excited about my dentist appt - as I have not had my teeth cleaned since before our wedding. (2 YEARS ago!) I like clean teeth and currently they don't stay clean very long. 2 hours after I brush they feel 'furry.'

At 2:15 I was entering the mall to return something when Matt called me and asked "did you know you had a dentist appointment today?" "Yes - it's at 3." "Nope - it was at 2 - you need to call them and reschedule." Crap!!!!

I decided to drive there (I was only 7 minutes away) and see if I could plead to keep my spot. After all, it's much harder for them to say 'no' if I'm standing there in front of them. :) They were very, very nice and actually did work me in! They were not able to clean my teeth, but they took my x-rays and let the dentist do an exam. I have a small cavity (um, it's been there since before the wedding, I totally forgot that I needed to have that done!) and I have a filling that needs to be replaced. They worked out to have both of those things done tomorrow. My dentist HUGGED me before I left and told me how happy she was to see me again.

I bought them a small pot of tulips to take in tomorrow to show my gratitude. I doubt that many dentists get gifts from their patients - and I know how much I appreciate gifts from our clients, so yeah, I'm going to thank them for their helpfulness and kindness. :)

Last on the title list are the icicles! We have some crazy icicles around here! I've never seen the likes of these before. Matt saw one the other day that was like 5-6 feet long!

Here are a few pics of some around our house. Enjoy!

This is right outside our front door - scary!!!!

Frozen door handle. Cool.

This is an "8" that is in the ice on our front porch that I think is just weird.

Overdue Blog - I'll make up for it with pictures!!!! :)

So, I've kind of made it my habit during my sabbatical to blog on Thursdays. No particular reason, that's just kind of how it has worked out. After last Thursday's post I went out and prepared for our impending snow storm. We were house-bound again for the weekend - but had some fun. We watched the Superbowl and the snow. :) (Some pictures of the snow are at the bottom of this blog.) I made a fantastic dinner that was 2 days in preparation (pineapple smothered pork loin and roasted potatoes) that we shared with our neighbors, Benny, Christine, and Viola. They live right next door - so we walked through the deep snow to bring them dinner. :) We had a great night of conversation with them. I'm really thankful for kind neighbors. Even if they are crazy and hand shovel their gravel driveway that is LONGER than ours! :)

This past Thursday I did do some writing (finished up an update email that I worked on most of Wednesday evening) and I didn't feel much like blogging after that. I had a GREAT day on Thursday - felt great, actually! Friday and Saturday were two of the worst days I've had in, oh, probably 6 months or so. My legs hurt SO bad Friday night that I caved and took some hydromorphone in order to sleep. That plan back-fired as I woke up probably 30-40 times during the night because I was itchy. Narcotics can do that. No more narcotics for me.

I was sitting on the couch Saturday morning and just started to cry. I didn't have a good reason for it other than the fact that I felt crappy. Later I realized that it was mostly due to hormones. Dang hormones!

Yesterday was better. Today is not great, but not bad. :) But I thought I would share with you the therapy I receive when I do feel bad and stay on the couch for a while. This is my sweet Sophie. And this is her making me feel better. :) (I've never posted a video to the blog before - it may not work......)

Ok, looks like the video is at the bottom of the post..... Turn up your volume to hear her!!!

I must say a big "Thank You" to my friend, Chris who gave me a wonderful trick on how to swallow the oil that I need to take with my medicine, now. Orange juice in a shot glass, then the oil, hold nose, and down it goes!!! I only taste the orange juice! And my lips get all oily and soft. :)

So one of my 'giftings' is the ability to organize just about anything. And I ENJOY the process. Tremendously. Here is one of my simple little projects that I'm quite proud of:

We had all of our hats and gloves just in a ceramic pot that you had to dig through in order to find what you needed. I thought an over-the-door shoe rack would work nicely. And it does!!!! This is on the inside of our coat closet. I will remove it when I pack up our winter stuff for storage. (IF we EVER get to pack up our winter stuff this year......)

And here is ONE of our MOUNTAINS of snow in our driveway. Our driveway has had to be plowed 3 times thus far. I don't think this snow is going away anytime soon. And since we don't really have any hills near-by to go sledding on, I've been sliding down this bad boy (no sled required.) :)

The cleared-out driveway gives Neema some room to really RUN - which she enjoys. What she enjoys even more is catching her frisbee. :) Here she is in flight. I think this is SO cool!

I have finally marked off some of my "to-do" list projects! Our taxes are done! AND I have uploaded ALL the pictures and videos from my laptop at full resolution to my flickr account for safe-keeping. I have two other computers that contain pictures - so they are next. :) Once they are all on flickr - they will be doubly backed up on an external hard drive and placed in a fire-proof safe. I like my pictures. I want to have them, always.

If you would like to see my pictures or videos (there are TONS of them) just visit
www.flickr.com/photos/leslieland

It's best to look at them through the 'sets' on the right hand of the screen. "More Sets" will let you see all of the sets I currently have.

More snow!

I learned something yesterday: snowballs and trees make for good pitching practice. :)

I also learned something else: I throw like a girl. Ha!

I never did play softball or baseball on a real team or anything (well, I was on a T-ball team when I was about 5 or so) but my brother and I used to wear holes in the grass in our yard playing 'ghost man' baseball with plastic bats and whiffle balls when we were young. I have some great memories of those summer afternoon/evenings - mom would often have to make us come in after it was dark. Our night vision was quite advanced. :) As we got older, my brother played baseball for real for our high school and he played for our (quite competitive) church league softball team. I would help him practice by throwing him grounders - as he was a second baseman and those grounders could be difficult to master.  

At one point in my life, I could throw a nerf football in a high and tight spiral farther than a whole gaggle of buff college guys. (A very pround moment in my life, indeed!)

But I learned with my snowball exercise that I have lost those skills. Whether it is due to the injury where the horse destroyed my shoulder or simply my lack of trying to throw anything at a target for the past 5 years or so, I now throw like a sissy little girl. I tried again today - I did even worse! Bleh.

When I did hit the tree - I did hit it at the same place everytime, so that's something, right?

:)

We got more snow over the weekend. And we are getting a whole lot more this coming weekend. What a winter!

I FINALLY finished up my work project, so now I feel a little more free to relax and work on some funner things around the house. My work project is something that I've actually worked on since my first year at the clinic. I do most of our horse vaccines in the spring and the first year I was driving all over the place in a single day to only visit 3 or 4 farms. Not very efficient. I put into play a system where we sent out letters to our horse clients indicating that we would give a discount on the trip fee if they scheduled us to come out on their area's alloted day. It has been an evoloving system - mostly done on yellow pads of paper. But THIS year, my brilliant receptionist Karen sent me an Excel spreadsheet with all of our horse owning clients on it as well as their address! Matt helped me alphabetize the whole thing AND create another column where I could designate what district their horse was actually in. What took so long is the computer generated 475 names! I had to go through every client to see if they were still active, still had horses, and see where those horses actually are. I ended up deleting about 150 of those names due to inactivity. I took the rest and created a map to plot out where each of those clients are in order to re-organize the districts.  It was a much larger undertaking than I expected!!!  But I'm thrilled with the end result - it's done.  It's done right.  And most importantly, because it was done digitally (not on a yellow pad of paper), I never have to do it again!  :)

Matt and I were supposed to go over to some friends house to watch the LOST premiere on Tuesday, but alas, the snow kept us house-bound.  But they called us as soon as it was over to discuss.  :)  I've spent a lot of time reading message boards and the like to entertain multiple theories to the intensely confusing 1st episode.  I hopelessly addicted.

I still continue to have good days and bad days as far as how I feel.  One thing that has changed for the better is that my hair has stopped falling out!  Yay!  When Matt and I got married, I had super long hair.  Soon after, it began falling out due to my illness.  I had to eventually cut it off because it had gotten so thin and stringy.  I am trying to grow it out again - and I'm so super happy to have it filling in and not falling out!

I have experimented a bit more in the kitchen recently.  Thought I'd share some of my latest creations.  This first picture is a bit odd.  It's an emptied out pomegranate.  A few months ago I was invited over for dinner by my friend, Erin.  She introduced me to pomegranate as a tasty little snack.  It takes some work to get it out of it's cozy little shell, but it's worth it.

After emptying out all the little pieces and rinsing them off, I have kept them in a bowl in the fridge.  High in antioxidants, juicy and crunchy, and tangy-sweet, they have become a favorite snack of mine.  Chocolate is still first.  

Aren't they pretty????

Ok, this meal I was super excited about - but it turned out, poorly.  Marinated and seared ahi tuna steaks, rice, and stir-fried asparagus.  The tuna was TERRIBLE.  It was SO fishy, I couldn't eat it.  The asparagus (which is certainly not a veggie I like) was darn tasty!  I even bought some more for a repeat.

Now this one was a winner!  Potato-encrusted talapia, green beans, and yams.  YUM!!! 

I think that's enough for tonight.  Sorry I'm not more interesting.  I'll try and dig up some good work stories for my next blog.  :)