Frankenlefty has left the building.

Or will have by 8 am tomorrow.  Same problem as last time.  Infected skin, no bacterial growth in cultures.  They took about 200 ml of fluid out of frankenlefty this morning.  Brought it down in size from a freakish stripper boob to a normal stripper boob.  Can’t tell you how much better that feels.  It had actually started to migrate to the right so I truly would have been uniboobed.  PS says I stil have options.  I have to wait another 3 to 6 months to stabilize and we can work up a new plan.  Maybe one that doesn’t involve implants, depending on how frankenlefty looks without the expander.  That’s fine by me.

I have to admit there is just a tiny part of me that is glad to see it gone.  It’s been ridiculous, as I’ve mentioned before. I have to actually haul the thing up and out the window to reach things in a drive thru.  Definitely not going to miss that.  I will also be able to sleep on my left (once the drains are out.  Again.) without feeling uncomfortable.

Oh and I’ll have drains for Halloween.  I figure I can go as a Breast Cancer Awareness Borg.

I am 1 of 8.

Get your mammograms.

Resistance is futile.

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YSC Hats 1 and 2

I was housebound yesterday since the roofers came and their trailer blocked in my car.  So I had to do some knitting then.  Darn it.  Grins.  Anyway I finished the first hats so I can get them in the mail on Monday.  Princess Isabella Monkey-Bear and Bob were very gracious to model them for me.

The earflap hat is the Thorpe pattern from Through the Loops!  I used LionBrand wool and some purple Jiffy for accent.  The beret is the One Day Beret from the same designer.  I used Wool Ease Thick and Quick that I got from Vera Chappell.  She was a very nice lady who went to my church when I was a kid.  She bought Girl Scout cookies from me.  And probably a lot of other things I don’t remember.  When her health started to fail, she donated her yarn to the crafting people at our church.  She passed away this last week.  I’d like to think this kind of thing is what she’d like her yarn to be used for.

The Thorpe hat is for the girl in Canada who I wrote about already.  The beret is for one of my fellow Stage III ladies.  A mama and 3rd grade teacher down in Alabama.  I hope the wool isn’t too hot.

Throws Like A Girl

So my daughter asked me what “Throws Like a Girl” meant.  She’s already heard the negative version at school.   I told her that some people use it as an insult and how it’s not ok to use someone’s gender as a cutdown.   L is a girl and is frighteningly accurate with a ball.  So we talked about how it’s silly to say it and the best response for her would be to say, “Of course, I throw like a girl, I AM a girl.  And I throw just as well as you (annoying little boy, I add in my head.)”

When I named the blog, I had two things in mind.  Using the insult Throws Like A Girl to mean something positive and a clever (or so I thought.  Grins.) play on the knitting aspect of the blog.  I knit by “throwing”.  I’m a girl.  etc.

I am actually quite offended by the idea that being female equals being weak or subpar.  That’s probably why I love Sarah Haskins over at current.com so much.  She is great at pointing out how the media encourages us to stay in archaic gender roles.  She points out the absurdity that yogurt will fix all our problems and that men can’t cook dinner or do laundry without the help of some special cleanser.

I always thought Throws Like A Girl would be a great name for a girl’s softball team, too.

Hats and Friday Feel Up.

So I’m still knitting.  Socks.  Arm of Mom’s dress.  And hats.

I made a lot of hats last year.  Mostly for myself.  Some for others.

This year I decided to cope with Pinktober by making hats for some of the new girls (and old girls) over at the YSC.

This hat is for a 29 year old.  Who was just diagnosed with a recurrence.  She already went through this once when she was 26.  26!

I guess if there’s anything to take with you as October progresses, it’s that young women can and do get breast cancer.  When it comes down to it, it’s not about ribbons, fundraisers and charitable donations (though they are nice and helpful).  It’s about women being disfigured in a way that’s incomprehensible until it happens to you.  It’s about facing issues with fertility after diagnosis and treatment.  About the possibility of leaving our loved ones behind too soon. Our tumors are measured in centimeters (the average breast cancer tumor of someone over 50 is measured in millimeters.)   It’s a very different disease from breast cancer in older women.  So go check ’em out.  Stay healthy.  🙂

Lazy Cooking Tip of the Day

All lasagna noodles are no-boil lasagna noodles.  Just make sure you use enough sauce.

The Waiting Place

In Dr. Seuss’s Oh the Places You’ll Go, he talks about the Waiting Place.  That’s sort of where I feel I am these days.

I had to go back to the doctors this week after I noticed a red spot growing on the underside of frankenlefty.  On Saturday, it started peeling.  I have to admit it was very tempting to just break down then.  For those of you who’ve been following, peeling was the beginning of the end for frankenrighty.  But I didn’t.  I made the appointments Monday morning and have dutifully gone to see both docs.  I can tell that Infectious Disease doc is trying to be positive but he’s worried.  Plastic surgeon is stumped and frustrated.  PS took some fluid today and is trying to see if it will grow anything.  (Remember that frankenrighty never grew anything until it was removed.)

I’m trying to stay neutral (positive but realistic).  Starting another round of Bactrim.  I seriously can’t believe after 3 1/2 months of antibiotics that any bacteria could possible grow in my body.  But apparently one is.

So I wait.

4!?! Holey Moleg!

How can my baby be 4?  I mean I should have been ready for it.  I did plan the party, ramen noodles and all.  The boy chose ramen for his birthday lunch. (It takes 7 packages of ramen to feed 14 people.  Just in case you were wondering.)  Watching him play with his new toys and his cousins, I just marvel at how much he’s grown in the last year.  His vocabulary is growing, “I not ‘noxious, Mom.  I just pwaying.”  “Holy Moleg!”  “I can’t know that.”  I find myself using that last one a lot.

And I have to admit, my favorite pictures are the ones that show his lovely quirky personality.  Someday he’ll forgive me for posting them on the internet, right?

Happy Birthday, little guy!  Don’t grow up too fast.  I’m not ready.

When it’s cold

I like to bake.  And Colorado’s drizzly/snowy weather today is just perfect for that.  Happily, my friend Sarah posted a recipe for Pumpkin Gingerbread, which is now baking in the oven.   I did have to lighten it up a bit out necessity rather than taste.  I ran out of oil and sugar so I had to add some applesauce and 1 cup of sugar substitute (I’m trying out Xylitol.  We’ll see how that goes.)

My Mom called and wanted to know where I got the pumpkin.  (Apparently Floridian grocery stores don’t carry it until Thanksgiving.)  I am actually still using up some of my chemo brain pumpkin.  I’m not sure if I ever blogged about this, but I know I’ve told the story many times.  At some point last year, I developed a subconscious craving for pumpkin.  I never actually put it on the grocery list and I don’t actually remember doing it, but I guess I picked up a couple cans of pumpkin every time I went to the store and then put them away when I got home and promptly forgot about them.  About mid October, I decided to rearrange the pantry closet and found that I had purchased at least eight cans of pumpkin.  And one can of sweet potatoes.  And a butternut squash.  I have actually used 3 cans in just the last month.  And I still have more.

I guess I like my squash.

New J funny:

The boy has trouble with s and m’s  (no snickering).  So today he kept asking me for a noovie, which I took to mean “movie”.  Which was wrong.  He wanted a smoothie.  So I took this opportunity to work on the sm sound.  Sssssmmmoothie.    Ssssnoovie.   Ssssmoo.   Sssssnooo.  Ssssmah.   Ssssmah.  Sssmoo.   Ssssnooo.  Ssssmoothie.  Snoovie.

Snoovie it is.  One new correct letter sound is a win, yes?

2 minute rant

So remember back a looooooong time ago, like, oh say, last year, when we’d go to the grocery store, buy our food, and come home with 13 or 14 plastic bags of groceries.  I want to know why now it is acceptable for baggers to shove the exact same amount of groceries into 4 of the bags I brought from home.  It’s ridiculous.  I realize that I don’t have “lifting restriction” tattooed on my forehead, but seriously, I could only bring one bag in at a time.  It’s not like I bring the bags for the 5 cent refund either.  I brought 8 bags.  Use them.

Seriously.

Rant over.

Know what this is?

It’s an arm!  I finally finished the length of my Mom’s dress.  And now I’m working on the sleeves.  I started this in January of 2008.  I actually knitted quite a bit of it while I was in the waiting room at the Urgent Care in Florida waiting to find out about my lump.  I had to take a hiatus during chemo.  (People on chemo shouldn’t do cables!  I had to frog it back to the yoke due to all mistakes I made.)

Anyway.  ARM!  I’m finally on the arm!