Alas, the bucket list

Life-threatening events are supposed to give a person a new appreciation for life. Maybe it’ll kick in after the unbelievable fatigue the radiation gives me wears off. Right now perhaps I’m in a grief stage, because all I can think about is all the things I wanted to do that I’ll never get to. My finances are gone and I’ll never be able to build them back up. If I can get out of the hole we’re in and out of debt, that alone will be a miracle. There will never again be extra money. I will never get to retire.

Since I did nothing to get this cancer in the first place, there is nothing I can do to keep it from recurring. I’m helpless. Being helpless makes me depressed. The depression starts the round of “I’ll never get to.”

Here’s my bucket list, that I’ll never get to:

I want to go to Egypt and see the pyramids and the sphynx.

I want to go to the British Isles and do a tour of castles, sit in pubs and listen to people talk in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the smaller islands, and buy beautiful yarn made from the sheep there.

I want to see Paris, climb the Eiffel Tower, see the Louvre.

I want to see Venice, and ride in gondolas, see Saint Mark’s Square and the Bridge of Sighs.

I want to see the Alps, and the beautiful Lake Cuomo.

I want to take a cruise, and see whales.

I’d like to see the northern lights.

I want to see Washington DC and other historic parts of New England.

I’d like to see New York City and browse the fabulous stores, and go to some shows.

I want to see the Smithsonian.

I want to see Key West and Epcot Center and Disney World, and take a guide boat through the Everglades.

I want to see Seattle and take the Highway 1 coast drive.

I want to go to Hawaii, Bora Bora, and Tahiti.

I want to own a home and make a fabulous garden.

I want the time to write all the books in my head even if no one ever reads them. Even if they’re crap.

I want the time to knit up all the yarn in my stash. I’d really like to take the courses to become a Master Knitter.

Right now what I want the most is to get through the last week of radiation therapy, then get my energy, saliva and sense of taste back so that I can job-hunt. I suspect my library career is over, considering that I’m losing my hearing and can no longer speak clearly. I have no idea what I can do for a living now. My most anxious hope is that I can get into a three-bedroom home so I can put all my husband’s clutter into his man-cave, and all mine into my study, and have a decent-looking house for a change, and get the rest of my belongings out of storage.

The definition of a good mother

There is currently the oddest competition among some mothers to be The Best Mother. They brag to each other about how long they breast-fed and how much they do for their children, waiting on them hand and foot. They buy the kid expensive designer outfits, do the child's homework for them, and let the child rule their home.

An example recently made the cover of a major magazine. A woman in a defiant pose is breast-feeding a child standing on a chair. From his height, he could be anywhere from three to five years of age. I can tell you a few other things about that child. He is very likely still wearing diapers, because she's going to let him tell her when he's ready for potty training. When he starts school, she's going to do his homework for him and scream at the teacher for attempting to make the child behave in class. When he starts trying to find a job, she'll go with him to the job interviews. If somehow he manages to land a job, she'll scream at his boss when the boss has to discipline him. His relationships with women will be transitory, because no one will ever be able to do enough for him and he's never been made to do anything he didn't want to do in his life. He will be an infant until he dies.

Because that's what these self-proclaimed supermoms do: they raise an individual who will never become an adult. And so, they will fail at the only true test of how good a mother you were: Have you raised a functioning, capable adult.

Breast-feeding is beautiful and natural and provides a child with immune-system protection and a full range of nutrients needed for a BABY. In third world countries, breast-feeding continues past infancy because they don't have the resources to nourish a small child. We don't have that problem in this country.

If you breast-feed that child past the time your child is eating solid food, you are keeping that child an infant. If you don't toilet-train until the child wants to give up the convenience of diapers, you are keeping that child infantile well past toddler age and very likely until kindergarten or beyond. If you do your child's homework, that child learns nothing. If you do everything for that child, the child never learns how to cope with life.

I have seen mothers in the library doing the research for their high-school-age children's papers. I have heard stories from friends about young people coming into job interviews with their mothers. I know a young woman, in her twenties, who lost her job due to chronic absenteeism. Her mother came in and chewed out the boss. It did not get the woman her job back.

A significant portion of an entire generation is being trapped in perpetual childhood. They won't be able to hold jobs, live on their own, have stable relationships with spouses, and will have no clue how to be parents. They will be ignorant, helpless, and unable to think on their own. They will be prime candidates for cults and hate groups because they will be looking for someone to depend on.

These alleged supermoms are in fact crippling their children.

Nobody deserves that

I looked online at a video for the stop-smoking campaign, wanting to read the background. This video featured Terrie, a once-lovely woman whose health, face, and voice have been ravaged by the effects of smoking and the treatment for cancer that had resulted. In spite of the pretty blonde wig, she looked like she was in her late 80s. She's 51, seven years younger than I am. Her skin has shriveled into deep wrinkles. She has lost all her teeth and her lower jaw has nearly disappeared. She has a stoma (hole) in her throat and can barely speak, in a voice that's barely human. She must have spent her 40s going through hell, her looks disintegrating in years she still should have looked young.

When I read the comments, I was appalled. So many people wrote that she had done this to herself, that she deserved it.

This woman wasn't a pedophile or a serial killer. She hadn't tortured anyone. She smoked. That's all. A nasty habit, to be sure, but not deserving of such punishment. Many people smoke and have anything from no side effects at all to relatively mild ones. Others, like her, like my father, suffer the harshest of consequences. Why did they "deserve" that fate while others who committed the same "crime" got off scott-free?

The people who write that are indulging in a typical human response. They think, she did something bad that I don't do, so she deserves her fate and I won't have to go through that. They also get to deride her and feel superior.

Well, think again, you self-righteous snots, and grow some compassion. It, or something equally bad, can happen to you whether or not you did anything to "deserve" it. I never smoked, never chewed, and was never more than a social drinker, but I got oral cancer anyway. Not long ago, a famous children's book author, fat and sedentary, dropped dead of heart failure. So did a locally famous marathon athlete. My father ate lots of fried food, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and died at age 60. Linda McCartney, vegetarian, died of cancer at 56. A famous nutritionist of the 1980s died at 60 also. My chronically-overweight grandmother lived to 87.

In other words, there are no guarantees. It's a crap shoot. It's Russian roulette. You can increase your odds of living longer by healthy habits, and you can decrease them by unhealthy ones, but when it comes right down to it, you don't get a guarantee either way. You can eat everything healthy, you can exercise regularly, never smoke, never drink, and still have a time bomb in your body that you know nothing about until it kills you.

Nobody deserves to die young, regardless of what they did or didn't do for their health.

Everybody dies.
No exceptions.

Getting ready for radiation treatments

Since my cancer is in my mouth, drastic steps have been taken. I've had nine teeth pulled out, perfectly good teeth, because they were damaged enough from 58 years of life that they might cause a horrible side effect called necrotic bone which would lead to my losing my lower jaw. So I no longer have molars. One premolar had to go too. I'm grateful they left my front teeth.

The radiation treatments start Monday, May 14. They made a plastic mask to hold my face still because the radiation has to go in specific places. As there's no way to hold my tongue still without making me choke, I have to try to do that myself. The side effects are the death of many salivary glands resulting in permanent dry mouth. My sense of taste will be damaged for at least months, maybe permanently. My teeth will have to be treated with extreme care and a lot of dentist visits from now on. I've had extremely expensive fluoride trays made. I thank God my church had resources available to help me pay for part of all the dental work. My long-suffering Mother paid for some too. Nothing like being unemployed and not having insurance while all this is going on.

The mask was very interesting. It was a mesh of plastic that they heat up with warm water and then mold to my face. I can breathe through it with no problem and open my eyes a bit if I need to. I didn't find it claustrophobic, for which I'm grateful. I have a tube of that mesh in my mouth to hold it open and help me hold my tongue still. The first thing they tried triggered my gag reflex. This will be clamped onto the headrest, and then I'll be slid into the radiation machine.

I HATED having my teeth pulled. I HATE having no molars and having such a hard time eating. I DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS. But this kind of cancer likes to return, and I WANT TO LIVE. Even though my life has been in the crapper the last few years, I still want more of it. I want to keep writing. I want my husband. I want my mom. I want my cats purring, soft and warm in my lap. I want to get to travel some more. I want to own a home again, and plant a garden. There are too many books I still want to read. I want to have more good times. So for all this, I'll endure what must be endured.

Another sweet cat in kitty heaven

Neelix was an orange tabby tom, a muted orange, with green eyes and no white on him anywhere. His belly was the same gold with soft burnt-orange stripes as the rest of him. He had to live with my Mom, because he couldn't stand being in a multi-cat household, so I really only had him for five years though he lived fourteen.

I had a young black cat named B'Elanna at the time I got him, but like to have two cats. When I went into the cat pen at PetSmart, I had my eye on a gray and white cat at the end of the aisle. But as I passed the first cage, a golden paw grabbed my sleeve, and a scratchy little voice said, "Meow." I looked, and the leggy half grown cat stared me in the eyes. He had a tail longer than his body, and it was straight up in the air. I bought him and took him home. He was upset that there was another cat in residence, and she sure wasn't thrilled to see him. I've dealt with that before, and left them to work it out.

That night in bed, B'Elanna was at the foot as usual. Neelix got up and curled himself under my chin.

Three months later, B'Elanna got run over and killed. Her story some other time.

Neelix loved to sit on my lap with his face up in mine, giving me kitty kisses, often with his paws around my neck. Sometimes he'd nibble a button on my shirt. I had to call a halt to that when he broke one! He was very friendly, and I was able to get him to tolerate a harness and leash, though I had to follow where he went rather than leading him.

The most special thing he ever did was at the library branch where I worked as the children's librarian. I did a program on cats, and brought Neelix. I had one little girl in my storytime group who had severe cerebral palsy. She was confined to a motorized wheelchair, unable to control any part of her body, unable to talk, nearly blind. Her mom said she loves cats but is allergic to them. With permission, I put Neelix on her lap. She tried to pet him but pounded on him instead. Neelix didn't flinch, just let her do it. He sat on her lap and touched his nose to her face, giving her kitty kisses for as long as her mom thought it was okay for her to touch him. It gave the little girl such a thrill, and I think that alone earned his place in heaven.

Later I got three kittens at the same time, and he did fine with them until I moved from a 1500 square foot townhouse to a small one-bedroom apartment. Even then, he was adjusting, until the apartment next to mine caught fire and my cats were traumatized. All four survived unhurt, but Neelix started spraying. All over. All the time. So Mom said she'd take him, and he settled into her apartment as only cat.

She enjoyed him, though she's not an animal lover. Her apartment has a tiny fenced back yard, the size of a patio, and she'd let him out on his leash while she watched him to make sure he didn't leave the yard. When he wanted out and she was too busy, he'd back up to something and look like he was going to spray it. Sometimes when he didn't get attention, he'd get up on a cabinet, stare at her until he knew she was watching, and knock off a nick-nack. Other times he'd get a toy and throw it at her. She thought he was very smart. Every night when she took out the trash, she'd clean the litter box. She'd announce, "I'm taking the trash now," and he'd go use the litter box before she cleaned it.

Smart, loving, handsome cat. Rest in peace, Neelix.

The big C: Saga of the teeth

The oral surgeon X-rayed my face and told me I was going to have to have 4 to 6 of my back molars pulled.

Crap.

I have gone through all kinds of hell with my teeth, and now this.

To begin with, my baby teeth came in decayed. According to Mom, I had no teething pain at all. One morning she came in to my crib and I smiled at her, and there was a little black tooth sticking up. I had fillings in most of my baby teeth, and had to go in every 6 months for fluoride treatments to keep my permanent teeth from doing the same thing.

When my permanent teeth came in, they were blessedly free of cavities. That didn't last long. My enamel was thin and weak, and despite all the brushing and flossing I did, I had a filling nearly every time at the dentist, twice a year, every damn time until I got out of high school.

And then when I was sixteen, I got taken to an orthodontist. My bottom teeth looked like a picket fence, and my Bucky Beaver front top teeth were beginning to fold over each other. As the orthodontist put it, I had size 12 teeth in a size 8 jaw. One tooth got pulled then, the back molar on the upper right side. It was defective and growing sideways. The wisdom tooth promptly began to come down in its place, and the orthodontist looked at the X-rays and told me I had to go into the hospital to have the other three removed. The one coming in would trigger the other three, and they were under my back molars. While I was under complete anaesthetic, they had to make L-shaped tunnels in my jaw, cut the wisdom teeth into pieces, and pull them out. Thank God for anaesthetic. The worst part was the pureed food I was served in the hospital afterward. I took a big bite of what I thought was chocolate pudding. It was pureed liver. I hate liver. That ranks as one of the top 5 awful things I've eaten.

One thing I had to do when my teeth were being straightened was endure the dentist filing between my teeth with ribbon files to give them a little room to be moved. Think of fingernails on a blackboard, but in your mouth. Nasty. But they didn't have to pull any. However, as my bone is very dense, they had to push harder to get my teeth to move. Thank God for Sensodyne toothpaste! I had frequent dreams during the straightening time that my teeth were soft and I could pull them out with my fingers. Shudder.

After braces and retainers, my teeth looked pretty good for quite a while. I even ran out of fillings for a few years. Then, in my early 30s, I did one evening of tequila shots with a couple friends, and my front teeth were forever damaged from the limes. Weak enamel. Crap. Every single dentist I've been to since has asked if I habitually sucked lemons.

The teeth had a couple decades of no problems, though my once rabbity front teeth wore down to the point where they're no longer than the rest of them. In my 40s and early 50s I got four crowns, one at a time. Three were gold, and I've had no problems with them. One was porcelain, and I've always been sorry I didn't get gold again. The dentist thought it would show. I've had problems with that crown since I got it. Never went back to that dentist, either.

If I lose 4 teeth, I'll lose 2 of the gold crowns. They're on the back molars on the bottom. Maybe I can sell the gold. If they wind up pulling 6, I'll lose all three bottom crowns. The stupid porcelain one is on the next-to-farthest back tooth on the upper right side. If I keep the tooth, I'll have the crown replaced with a gold one. I don't at this point know if they'll fit me with a bridge of some sort to replace the teeth, or if I'll just have to do without them. Guess I'd better eat some steak while I still can, huh?

The Big C part 4

There are two conflicting old sayings: "Ignorance is bliss" and "Knowledge is power." Usually both are a mixed bag. Wanting some knowledge, I found an oral cancer support site online.

It was not supportive. It was terrifying.

First were the statistics, which I mentioned previously. One-year survival: 85%. Sounds good, right? Five-year survival: 59%. Not so good, but still better than 50-50. Ten-year survival: 47%. Okay, not liking that one. I'd like to live to older than 68, thanks.

Then I investigate the chat groups, and found one woman who has survived oral cancer not once, but four times. The catch? She doesn't have any tongue left. They had to cut away a bit more each time. On that note, I exited the site and deleted it from favorites. That was honestly more than I needed to know.

And in the words of Han Solo in Star Wars, episode V (yes, I'm a nerd): "Never tell me the odds."