Listen to Your Doctor

Two days ago, I was enjoying some much needed relaxation time yesterday in the spare room. I was reading and did not want to get up. The past week has been filled with stress. Prins wanted to get up and go outside to play after we had only been in the room for a half hour. I told him to settle down, and he responded by yawning, then snuggling next to my head. Celine, Dove and Skadi didn't bother to move while Prins advocated to get up; they knew he would not win that argument. I had my first scheduled mammogram on Tuesday afternoon. I got the results two hours afterwards and they couldn't be better; my breasts are healthy and no sign of anything abnormal. Some computer analysis determined that I have a 12% or less chance of developing breast cancer over my lifetime. I'm in the lowest risk group. It's not "zero risk," but I could not have had better results. I was still a nervous wreck and had a panic attack Tuesday evening. I had a PTSD episode that emotionally took me back to 2000, when I had a large benign tumor removed from my right breast. I remember the terrifying ordeal. The surgery was changed while I was under because the tumor was too large to be removed in a way that didn't require stitches, the originally planned procedure. So imagine my surprise when I woke up and my doctor told me that I had 17 stitches that "would leave a scar," and that I was supposed to refrain from any vigorous exercise for months. That was in June, and I had just moved my horse Allie to a boarding stable on a beach in Brooklyn, and there was NO WAY I was going to refrain from riding. I was back in the saddle two days later, and two of my stitches popped out, and boy was I in trouble. For several weeks afterwards I limited my outings to lunging Allie, and my mother blamed my recklessness for the resulting prominent scar. The technician on Tuesday marked the scar with a piece of tape that looked exactly like a stitch pattern. She had to do that so that the radiologist would know why the scar tissue was there. I remembered to remove the tape in the shower that evening, and at that moment my panic attack subsided. I had other health problems in my late teens and early 20's, all unusual and all initially diagnosed by one doctor or another as "probably cancer." I had x-rays, MRI's, ultrasounds, so many rounds of bloodwork and so many biopsies. I never had cancer. I stopped taking oral contraceptive. I never missed more than two days of college. I stayed on the Dean's List, worked 25+ hours a week outside of school, applied to a dozen law schools in my senior year of college, and I graduated Summa Cum Laude in May 2002. I drove a Penske moving truck from Boston to Iowa City with my two parrots riding in their crates in the front passenger seat. My mother decided to drop me from the family health care plan in retaliation for me moving to Iowa. She wanted me to attend Brooklyn Law School, which had offered me a generous scholarship. She wanted me to live at home again, get rid of my parrots, get rid of my horse, and commute to school on the R subway train. I scrambled to get my own health insurance, which cost me $400 a month under a student plan, in 2002. I had to take out student loans to make ends meet; Iowa didn't offer me a scholarship. It was the best law school that I was accepted to; at the time it was #17 in the United States. I had started talking to some guy who was a student there in January 2002. He had an apartment near mine. His name was Andy Hosmanek. He didn't know anyone as defiant and headstrong as me. I'm pretty sure that he still doesn't. I had my first bloodwork and cervical exam in September 2002 at UIHC. Everything came back normal. It was the first time in my life that I had normal bloodwork results. Three months later, everything was normal again. Six months after that, normal. In a few years I was getting normal yearly results, then normal results every two years. Everything was pretty normal until 2010, when I started having panic attacks, but at the time I thought I was having a heart attack. I went twice to the ER for severe chest pains and then I went on leave from my job at the UI. I was diagnosed with PTSD, with accompanying depression and anxiety NOS. Andy had just quit working full time at a law firm to start a PhD program. It wasn't exactly a good time for me to have to go on sick leave and lose a substantial portion of our income. Andy finished his PhD on schedule and became an assistant professor, then was promoted a few years later to associate professor. He has won all kinds of awards and accolades for teaching. I volunteered for years at a parrot rescue, until April 2019, when I refused to back down on my demands to the founder for higher standards of care and inquiries into major financial irregularities. After a week of dramatic back and forth mud slinging, I resigned from the board of directors and never went back. Celine and her littermates were born less that a month later, and I was already on the list for a puppy from that litter. My world shifted. Instead of fighting personal health battles and hiding from the world in a decrepit backroad animal shelter, I had a whole new world open to me. I didn't want to aim my hopes too high. After all, I got Bridget as a puppy in 2016 and had hoped to do all kinds of performance stuff with her. Bridget was an obedience star and passed her AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC) test at six months old, after completing basic obedience with me. It was the first AKC award I won with a dog and I still have that ribbon on my fridge at home. I was so proud of Bridget. Unfortunately, Bridget's body wasn't made for performance. She has been plagued by joint problems and bouts of physical unsoundness. She had her first CCL surgery at 22 months and the second was just past her second birthday. So, I got Baby Celine with just the hopes of having a nice companion. In typical Little Red fashion, she knocked down every wall and broke through every fence, imagined or real. Baby Dove joined our family a year later, then Baby Prins. I personally know three women that were diagnosed with breast cancer in the past 12-18 months. One of them is a few years younger than me; the other a few months younger. The one a few months younger than me was diagnosed when her cancer was already past containment. It has metastasized throughout her body and all that can medically be done is symptom management. The other young women has a good prognosis. The woman older than me also has a good prognosis. I'm glad that I took my doctor's advice last week and scheduled a mammogram. I had a yearly physical last week, my first in a few years since physicals were rescheduled over and over due to covid surges. I have an absolutely awesome primary care physician. She said it was up to me whether I wanted to schedule a mammogram. She said that I am now past 40 so it would be a good idea. I listened to her advice and there's nothing that we learned from the mammogram that requires any follow up. The machine was brand new; the latest technology that takes 3D pictures. When I received my results, I received a copy of all the images. My breasts are "almost entirely fatty," which is apparent a good thing. I need to keep losing weight from the rest of my body and continue the antidepressant/anxiety medication, but am overall very healthy. My doctor prescribed to me a muscle relaxant to use as needed when I get back spasms again. She's a few years younger than me and also enjoys long hours spent outside in her gardens. She knew exactly what I was describing when I told her that I threw my back out last year. My heart and lungs sounded great. My blood pressure was a bit high but that always happens because I am so anxious at the doctor's office. I celebrated the visit by getting my hair cut and colored afterwards. It's cold and windy again in Iowa. We had a light freeze yesterday night and will have temperatures below freezing the next few nights. When it warms up again next week, I think I will clean the garden beds and move rocks out of the old small pond area until I can't walk anymore. You know, so I can see if that new medication really will stop my back spasms when my much abused body decides to protest!