Maybe it’s nothing

I’m trying to stay distracted from the bump area on my breast.  It’s difficult.  I want to touch it, try to analyze it.  I’ve researched for hours and come to no better conclusion as to what it can be.  Best I can do for now is to reassure myself that I should wait  a month, see what happens.  Not that Christmas Eve will put me in any better financial state or health insurance with which to get a doctor’s exam.

I find myself getting more angered at the health care debates now though.  I mean, three days ago I was already all for a public health care option.  But now, even more.  And to know that best case scenario it won’t be in place until 2014, it just isn’t soon enough.

If this is cancerous, I have no insurance to cover the treatments and once I do have insurance, this would be pre-existing.  I can almost feel the insurance companies shying away from the likes of me, sight unseen.  I am overweight, diabetes in my family, heart disease in my family, my permanent back injury, and I smoke.  I won’t even begin to go into my kids’ health issues.  I can’t imagine many doors opening to us, not willingly at least.

When my grandmother died of cancer, it had all begun with her breast cancer.  My aunt died only a few years ago due to breast cancer.  Neither are bloodline, but again, that doesn’t seem to matter with cancer.  But both were still young when they were diagnosed, my aunt certainly.  My grandmother was in her 60s.  Every year I donate to Susan G Komen and American Cancer Society, in their memory, as well as that of my father who died in his 50s due to cancer, my uncle who died in his 40s due to cancer.  Still no bloodline, thankfully adopted, but again, indiscriminate cancer.

This year, can’t afford to donate.  Maybe that’s a way of karma or some such saying thanks for skipping a year.

I know, it’s not likely.  I just have to apply a reason.  I have to be able to console my mind’s question of why.  I don’t have another answer.

I don’t need this.  Not now, not ever, but certainly not now.

Maybe it’s nothing.  I can hope.

Is it or isn’t it?

I am adopted and I am fortunate in that I know my biological parents, but my biological mother was adopted as well, and I know nothing of her family.  So, for medical history, I have only a paternal side.  Not that cancer seems to care much nowadays.  I know people who have led the perfect healthy and active lifestyle who were stricken fatally before their fortieth birthday.  I know people who smoked, drank and lived obese but devoid of cancer until old age took them in their nineties.  It’s indiscriminate and I stand as much of a risk as the next person for pretty much any cancer but testicular and prostate.  It’s knowing that I don’t stand immune that had me knelt over the porcelain throne half the evening.

I check my breasts once a week, sometimes more often.  I’m only 33, but better safe than sorry.  And if safe gives me an excuse to feel up my breasts, then where’s the downside?  Last night though, I found a lump.  It was by accident though.  I had grazed my hand over my left breast and felt the bump.  I went to my bed and laid on my back.  I began the circular motions, pressing and rolling the skin beneath my fingertips, trying to find what I felt again.  And I found it.  It was an inch in diameter, in the upper area of my breast, near the armpit.  I say it was, but it still is.

Just putting the memory to words here makes my stomach turn over again.

I’m jobless, with no insurance.  And October was the month for free breast exams.  I’ve already googled and found that non-breast cancer awareness month checks are free only to women over fifty.  I’d have to wait twenty years more for those.  What I know of breast cancer doesn’t give me that type of a time line.  I can’t rationalize the cost of an exam.  What if it isn’t breast cancer and I use money we don’t have for a unnecessary exam?  But what if it is and I am wasting limited time in wondering?  The statistics say that it likely isn’t breast cancer.  Four out of five lumps are not cancerous.  Less than 7% of breast cancer victims are under 40.

It doesn’t matter for now what the statistics say though.  My bank account balance says it isn’t an option.  And for now, it speaks the loudest.

More than this

It’s now seven months, and seven days since I lost my job.  I ran into an old co-worker two weeks ago who filled my head with tales of woe and how pitiful things are going in the inner sanctum and while I should have smiled with glee, I didn’t. But I have had a few fantasies since of my phone ringing and them offering me my job back.  Those are nice thoughts.  However in truth, it seems only debt collectors have my number on speed dial.

I don’t know what I would do without my husband.  I’ve never been out of work this long and I beat myself up mentally that I have not yet found a job.  He’s such a supportive man though.  Thankfully, whilst it is tight, we are still afloat.  And his encouragement keeps me motivated.

I’m contemplating going to school.  It would certainly fulfill my days more than reading the news and harvesting my Farmville crops while I refresh want ad sites.  I don’t know what I would study though.  I don’t know at this point how much having more education would make my resume stand out from the other five hundred per want ad.

I need something though.  More than this.  But then, anything is more than this.

No Virginia…

My daughters are 12 and 14.  And I decided it was time.  Time for the talk.  Time to break it to them the truths and horrors that I have kept from them for years now.  Part of my hesitation in having the talk was knowing that once I began the talk it would mean the end of an era.  It would mean I was openly admitting to myself and to them that they are growing up.  That they are no longer infantile little girls, but now becoming young ladies, advancing all too quickly towards adulthood.

I consoled myself in that they probably already knew what I was about to share with them.  I prepared myself for this serious conversation, rehearsing my words, dabbing away my tears and studying my reflection to find the appropriate facial expression to convey my seriousness without my emotional heartbreak.  To me, in many ways, they are still little kids.  Little girls who deserve to be spared the truths of my adult world.  But I have to accept that they are encountering adult conversations and situations and they deserve to be treated like the adults they are becoming.

I sat in their school parking lot, my final rehearsal before they were dismissed from school and I began my speech.

They piled in, energetic and full of chatter.  Kayla told me about how her friend was talking about her plans for the weekend which involved oral sex and a boyfriend.  Except my baby girl didn’t know that it was oral sex, she just reiterated the words of her friend and then shuddered, as did I.  ”Isn’t that nasty?”  I breathed a sigh of relief and inhaled a breath of courage.

As I told them the truth about Santa Claus and the identity of this seasonal man, I was hopeful that what I was saying was all old news to them both.

Instead, they both cried.  We all did.  It couldn’t possibly be true.  They thought I was joking.  I immediately regretted saying anything at all.  I had just assumed I would be confirming what they already knew.  Now granted, they had heard that it was a role played by me instead of an old pudgy man in a red suit, but evidently I have played it so well that they had even argued with their middle school friends that he was real.

There was the time in North Carolina when we were broke and couldn’t possibly afford gifts but Santa had came; and the iPods that I had refused to buy them, certainly that had to have been Santa; the fish that I hated but Santa had given…they offered me example after example of how it couldn’t be true.

Lord knows how much longer I could have avoided devastating their childhood.  I wish I had held on a bit longer.

Where are the jobs?

I keep reading and hearing all of this stimulus crap and I clearly remember our fine president speaking about how he wouldn’t support a nation of gimmes and how he wanted to see some doers.  I know he pushed through a bill back when I was still employed that would create jobs and now that I am not employed I’d kind of like to know where they are.

This is truly the longest length of time I have been unemployed, unless you count the three weeks with the airplane freaks as a job, which I did but don’t any longer since they let me go.  I am afraid my sanity is slipping as I have moved to the extreme of washing the walls in the house since there is nothing left to clean.

I read last week that the smallest bonus at Goldman Sachs is 700k.  You read that right, $700,000.00 for a bonus.  They don’t have any jobs in Florida though.  I looked, I actually alt-tabbed as I was reading the news article and went to their careers page.

I think that at least during this recession, yes Mr. Bush, it is a recession, employers should not be allowed to hire moonlighters.  I guess that’s the socialist in me right?

I have thought about applying for welfare, food stamps, the whole government cheese hand out thing, but I can still afford coffee so for now, I am not on my knees.

Ugh.