23 February 2008

what am i doing, you ask?

being very thankful that no more surgery is in the stars for this kid!!! i'm tired and sore and a little loopy, but that is ok. thank you for all the nice notes and healy vibes you all have sent my way! i feel them and appreciate them more than you will ever know.

xoxoxo
kara

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20 February 2008

oh, this is priceless...

do i smell a new pill in the making? merck? pfizer? anyone? anyone?

while i consider myself to be seriously tired of the failures of our two-party system, i' am still a lefty at the end of the day. a way over there lefty, but lefty nonetheless.

the assumption here is that conservatives aren't suffering from a psychological disorder. and if this argument holds water, then how does the author explain the massive invasion by the current government (comprised of conservatives) into every aspect of our lives? they can
read our email and tap our phones!

hmmmmm.... and it is completely "normal" that millions of conservative americans believe that there is a really old dude sitting on a cloud somewhere that orchestrates everything that we do and helps sports teams win games. they also talk to Him and sometimes, he answers. guess what the diagnosis is if you hear voices that aren't Him? 'tis a fine line... i'm just sayin'.

i imagine the author is also relying on the government to keep him safe from future terrorist attacks, enjoys driving on his roads and receiving mail every day...

at least ward churchill made a semi-interesting argument that was similar-ish in "pacifism as pathology." both make me giggle. but then again, maybe i just have a dis-order. ;)

The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness
By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD
Monday, December 4, 2006

Dr. Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr.,a forensic psychiatrist, explains the madness of liberalism in his new book The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. You can read an excerpt below, and read more at his website libertymind.com.

Like all other human beings, the modern liberal reveals his true character, including his madness, in what he values and devalues, in what he articulates with passion. Of special interest, however, are the many values about which the modern liberal mind is not passionate: his agenda does not insist that the individual is the ultimate economic, social and political unit; it does not idealize individual liberty and the structure of law and order essential to it; it does not defend the basic rights of property and contract; it does not aspire to ideals of authentic autonomy and mutuality; it does not preach an ethic of self-reliance and self-determination; it does not praise courage, forbearance or resilience; it does not celebrate the ethics of consent or the blessings of voluntary cooperation. It does not advocate moral rectitude or understand the critical role of morality in human relating. The liberal agenda does not comprehend an identity of competence, appreciate its importance, or analyze the developmental conditions and social institutions that promote its achievement. The liberal agenda does not understand or recognize personal sovereignty or impose strict limits on coercion by the state. It does not celebrate the genuine altruism of private charity. It does not learn history’s lessons on the evils of collectivism.

What the liberal mind is passionate about is a world filled with pity, sorrow, neediness, misfortune, poverty, suspicion, mistrust, anger, exploitation, discrimination, victimization, alienation and injustice. Those who occupy this world are “workers,” “minorities,” “the little guy,” “women,” and the “unemployed.” They are poor, weak, sick, wronged, cheated, oppressed, disenfranchised, exploited and victimized. They bear no responsibility for their problems. None of their agonies are attributable to faults or failings of their own: not to poor choices, bad habits, faulty judgment, wishful thinking, lack of ambition, low frustration tolerance, mental illness or defects in character. None of the victims’ plight is caused by failure to plan for the future or learn from experience. Instead, the “root causes” of all this pain lie in faulty social conditions: poverty, disease, war, ignorance, unemployment, racial prejudice, ethnic and gender discrimination, modern technology, capitalism, globalization and imperialism. In the radical liberal mind, this suffering is inflicted on the innocent by various predators and persecutors: “Big Business,” “Big Corporations,” “greedy capitalists,” U.S. Imperialists,” “the oppressors,” “the rich,” “the wealthy,” “the powerful” and “the selfish.”

The liberal cure for this endless malaise is a very large authoritarian government that regulates and manages society through a cradle to grave agenda of redistributive caretaking. It is a government everywhere doing everything for everyone. The liberal motto is “In Government We Trust.” To rescue the people from their troubled lives, the agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence, rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all class distinctions. With liberal intellectuals sharing the glory, the liberal politician is the hero in this melodrama. He takes credit for providing his constituents with whatever they want or need even though he has not produced by his own effort any of the goods, services or status transferred to them but has instead taken them from others by force.

It should be apparent by now that these social policies and the passions that drive them contradict all that is rational in human relating, and they are therefore irrational in themselves. But the faulty conceptions that lie behind these passions cannot be viewed as mere cognitive slippage. The degree of modern liberalism’s irrationality far exceeds any misunderstanding that can be attributed to faulty fact gathering or logical error. Indeed, under careful scrutiny, liberalism’s distortions of the normal ability to reason can only be understood as the product of psychopathology. So extravagant are the patterns of thinking, emoting, behaving and relating that characterize the liberal mind that its relentless protests and demands become understandable only as disorders of the psyche. The modern liberal mind, its distorted perceptions and its destructive agenda are the product of disturbed personalities.

As is the case in all personality disturbance, defects of this type represent serious failures in development processes. The nature of these failures is detailed below. Among their consequences are the liberal mind’s relentless efforts to misrepresent human nature and to deny certain indispensable requirements for human relating. In his efforts to construct a grand collectivist utopia—to live what Jacques Barzun has called “the unconditioned life” in which “everybody should be safe and at ease in a hundred ways”—the radical liberal attempts to actualize in the real world an idealized fiction that will mitigate all hardship and heal all wounds. (Barzun 2000). He acts out this fiction, essentially a Marxist morality play, in various theaters of human relatedness, most often on the world’s economic, social and political stages. But the play repeatedly folds. Over the course of the Twentieth Century, the radical liberal’s attempts to create a brave new socialist world have invariably failed. At the dawn of the Twenty-first Century his attempts continue to fail in the stagnant economies, moral decay and social turmoil now widespread in Europe. An increasingly bankrupt welfare society is putting the U.S. on track for the same fate if liberalism is not cured there. Because the liberal agenda’s principles violate the rules of ordered liberty, his most determined efforts to realize its visionary fantasies must inevitably fall short. Yet, despite all the evidence against it, the modern liberal mind believes his agenda is good social science. It is, in fact, bad science fiction. He persists in this agenda despite its madness.

Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr, MD is the author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago and served for two years as a psychiatrist in the United States Army. He is currently in private practice in the Chicago area.

Be the first to read Lyle Rossiter's column. Sign up today and receive Townhall.com delivered each morning to your inbox.



Copyright © 2006 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

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16 February 2008

move along... nothing "deep" here to see...

i need to think about other things for a minute. i need to. i was just remembering the great fire of 2006, when bebe was was an infant still, that made me laugh. laughing is good.

there's this bar i first of years ago. it has no windows. there is one lowly door out front and signage. that's it. many a friend has spent night drinking there. many. i've even had co-workers head over after a shift - at 5 in the morning. 'cause. you know. people are thirsty at 5 a.m. a musician pal of mine and a few of those aforementioned co-workers even recorded a rap about the place. if i ever figure out how to post stuff like that... i almost pee'ed myself the first time i heard it. but i digress.

i'd never been in the bar myself, somehow. i'd walked past it hundreds of times. when others would be going in, part of me wanted to take a peek, but i would never allow myself. wheni was invited along for after hours adventures, i always graciously declined. i wanted Mysterious Bar to be how it was in my head - what i'd imagined it to look like for all of those long years of hearing stories. i liked it that way. i didn't want to be disappointed. and because it had been so long, that i had successfully fought temptation, i couldn't cave.

so one night, i was working two doors down. it was me and bebe. no one had come in for an hour or so. suddenly, this dude comes busting through the front door.

"THE DUMPSTER OUTSIDE IS ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!"
"what?"
"THE DUMPSTER! IT'S ON FIRE!"

i scoop up bebe and bolt out the front door. sure enough, flames were leaping into the sky above it. lots of flames. there were cars parked a few feet away. the dumpster was really close to the building.

shit.

i run back in and call 911. a machine answered and put me on hold. all operators were busy. good thing that our services are in their prime with all of the billions being spent on homeland security, eh? i mean, what if osama would've been walking down the street for crissakes?

a minute passes. i'm still on hold. i think i'd not like hearing cars go boom.

i have to make a quick decision and save the day. before i even really think about it, i'm headed to the Mysterious Bar. i fling open the door and go in.

i say, "can someone help me? the dumpster is on fire and i've been on hold with 911 for several minutes now."

the 4 patrons turned from the televised sporting event and highballs they are all hunched over and around. and when i say they turned, they s o v e r y s l o w l y turned towards me.

and what they saw was me, a baby on one hip and a phone in the other hand, up to my ear.

it was at that moment i realized i had failed.

i was standing inside the Mysterious Bar.


"OHHHHHHHH, NOOOOOO!!!" i say, slamming my eyelids shut.

but it was too late. all of those years, all of the hard work i did to avoid seeing the innards of Mysterious Bar. down the drain. just like that. never to return.

damn.

finally, one dude jumps up, 'cause he recognizes me, and dumps the remainder of the beer in his pitcher down the drain. he fills the pitcher with water and races out the door with me.

i'm still on hold, mind you, listening to a pleasant lady telling me that she knows my call is important and she is sorry for the delay.

we race around the corner to find a teeny tiny fire, somehow on the sidewalk.

right as the water pitcher dude looks at me like, "ok. you can't be serious. i dumped my beer for this?"
and the Rest of Patrons That Came Along For The Excitement looks at me like, "i got up, walked all the way out here for this?"

right as all of this is happening, the 911 operator operator picks up.

i tell her that i don't need her now, that the fire i thought was huge, was gone. that someone put it out. she said they needed to send someone anyway and transfered me to the fire department.

while i was on hold... again... i try and explain to my rescuers what had happened. how BIG it was... i don't think they bought it. although, i can't imagine what my ulterior motive could've been. pssst... i really did it so bebe could see a firetruck up close.

kidding.

seriously, a lot of people lost something that night.



that dude lost his beer.
i lost my Mysterious Bar innocence.
those other dudes lost several minutes of their televised sporting event.
the firefighters lost all respect for my Fire Size Judging ability. and they laughed at me. whatevs. i was just doing my part in george bush's america for the community.

so we all just trudged back to our respective doors. i mean, we'd said everything there was to say...

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14 February 2008

riddle me this

why is it that if a person is strung out on a street drug - and they go and shoot up a bunch of people, it is a crime and others are screaming for a crack-down on drugs?

but if someone shoots up a school because their anti-depressants make them violent, there isn't a peep?

does the responsibility lie with the pusher/pharmacist or does it die with the shooter? does the responsibility lie with the drug itself? something to think about.

yes, i know, anti-depressants work for some people. for others, they have the potential to cause violence, something that is underreported widely. for some, something really awful occurs - and no one is really trying to find out why that is. it's kind of a toss up, really. maybe the meds will help you - maybe they will turn you into a monster. just try it and see!

and no, i don't know anything about what the shooter may have been on yesterday in illinois, but i have a guess. pretty much all of the shooters in these school/mall/target store scenarios, pre-dating columbine even, were taking prescription anti-depressants.

ssri = most commonly prescribed anti-depressant

about the following video:

The so-called "antidepressants" blunt feelings but are actually not very effective in diminishing depression per se. On the other hand, in a small number of cases, they lead to tragic violence.

In this video, psychiatrist Loren Mosher, M.D., former Chief of Schizophrenia Studies at NIMH, journalist Bob Whitaker, author of the acclaimed "Mad in America: The Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill," and psychologist Dan Kriegman, Ph.D., founder of Zuzu's Place, examine the way in which Big Pharma exaggerates the efficacy of their products and hides evidence of their dangers. Evidence is also presented to show that Big Pharma is composed of "true believers," i.e., the psychiatrists and drug execs are not just pushers; they're users!


i'm bumping this back up - kinda risky gamble to make, considering they may or may not even "work":

Antidepressants
Under Scrutiny
Over Efficacy
Sweeping Overview Suggests
Suppression of Negative Data
Has Distorted View of Drugs

By DAVID ARMSTRONG and KEITH J. WINSTEIN
January 17, 2008; Page D1

The effectiveness of a dozen popular antidepressants has been exaggerated by selective publication of favorable results, according to a review of unpublished data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.
ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

A review of research submitted to the FDA:
• Of 74 studies reviewed, 38 were judged to be positive by the FDA. All but one were published, researchers said.
• Most of the studies found to have negative or questionable results were not published, researchers found.
Source: The New England Journal of Medicine

As a result, doctors and patients are getting a distorted view of how well blockbuster antidepressants like Wyeth's Effexor and Pfizer Inc.'s Zoloft really work, researchers asserted in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Since the overwhelming amount of published data on the drugs show they are effective, doctors unaware of the unpublished data are making inappropriate prescribing decisions that aren't in the best interest of their patients, according to researchers led by Erick Turner, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University. Sales of antidepressants total about $21 billion a year, according to IMS Health.

Wyeth and Pfizer declined to comment on the study results. Both companies said they had committed to disclose all study results, although not necessarily in medical journals. GlaxoSmithKline PLC, maker of Wellbutrin and Paxil, said it has posted the results of more than 3,000 trials involving 82 medications on its Web site, and also has filed information on 1,060 continuing trials at a federal government Web site.

Schering-Plough Corp., whose Organon Corp. unit markets Remeron, and Eli Lilly & Co., which makes Prozac, said their study results were indeed published -- not individually, but as part of larger medical articles that combined data from more than one study at a time. The New England Journal study counted a clinical trial as published only if it was the sole subject of an article. "Lilly has a policy that we disclose and publish all the results from our clinical trials, regardless of the outcomes from them," a Lilly spokeswoman said.

Pharmaceutical companies are under no obligation to publish the studies they sponsor and submit to the FDA, nor are the researchers they hire to do the work. The researchers publishing in the New England Journal were able to identify unpublished studies by obtaining and comparing documents filed by the companies with the FDA against databases of medical publications.

"There is no effort on the part of the FDA to withhold or to not post drug review documents," an FDA representative said. For newer drugs, information is posted online "as soon as possible." Older documents aren't always available online and efforts to add those files to the Web are slowed by "a lack of resources," the agency said, acknowledging that there is a backlog in complying with records requests.

A total of 74 studies involving a dozen antidepressants and 12,564 patients were registered with the FDA from 1987 through 2004. The FDA considered 38 of the studies to be positive. All but one of those studies was published, the researchers said.

The other 36 were found to have negative or questionable results by the FDA. Most of those studies -- 22 out of 36 -- weren't published, the researchers found. Of the 14 that were published, the researchers said at least 11 of those studies mischaracterized the results and presented a negative study as positive.

Five Trials

For example, Pfizer submitted five trials on its drug Zoloft to the FDA, the study says. The drug seemed to work better than the placebo in two of them. In three other trials, the placebo did just as well at reducing indications of depression. Only the two favorable trials were published, researchers found, and Pfizer discusses only the positive results in Zoloft's literature for doctors.

One way of turning the study results upside down is to ignore a negative finding for the "primary outcome" -- the main question the study was designed to answer -- and highlight a positive secondary outcome. In nine of the negative studies that were published, the authors simply omitted any mention of the primary outcome, the researchers said.

The resulting publication bias threatens to skew the medical professional's understanding of how effective a drug is for a particular condition, the researchers say. This is particularly significant as the growing movement toward "evidence-based medicine" depends on analysis of published studies to make treatment decisions.

Colleagues' Questions

Dr. Turner, who once worked at the FDA reviewing data on psychotropic drugs, said the idea for the study was triggered in part by colleagues who questioned the need for further clinical drug trials looking at the effectiveness of antidepressants.

"There is a view that these drugs are effective all the time," he said. "I would say they only work 40% to 50% of the time," based on his reviews of the research at the FDA, "and they would say, 'What are you talking about? I have never seen a negative study.'" Dr. Turner, said he knew from his time with the agency that there were negative studies that hadn't been published.

The suppression of negative studies isn't a new concern. The tobacco industry was accused of sitting on research that showed nicotine was addictive, for instance. The issue has come up before notably with antidepressants: In 2004, the New York state attorney general sued GlaxoSmithKline for alleged fraud, saying it suppressed studies showing that the antidepressant Paxil was no better than a placebo in treating depression in children. Glaxo denied the charge and eventually settled with the attorney general. The company later posted on its Web site the full reports of all of the studies of Paxil in children.
[nejm]

But publication of negative studies is an issue that cuts across all medical specialties. And it has engendered some strong reactions in the medical-research world: To make it harder to conceal negative study findings, an association of medical journal editors began requiring in 2005 that clinical trials be publicly disclosed at the outset to be considered for publication later. The system isn't foolproof, since manufacturers often run exploratory studies without registering them and can selectively disclose favorable results. The rule only applies to studies intended for publication in a medical journal.

Some studies that don't eventually get published are registered with online trial registries, including the federal government's www.clinicaltrials.gov. Nonetheless, many studies still aren't being registered or reported, says Kay Dickersin, the director of the Center for Clinical Trials at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "We need something more meaningful," she said. "The average person has no idea that www.clinicaltrials.gov is not comprehensive."

The New England Journal study also points to the need for the FDA to disclose more information about the studies it receives, says Robert Hedaya, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Georgetown University Hospital. He said it was "disturbing" that the information on the negative studies wasn't made widely available by the FDA.

The FDA does post information, including unpublished studies, for some drugs on its Web site, says Dr. Turner. But information that hasn't yet made it online is hard to come by. Dr. Turner said he made public records requests for information not on the Web site more than a year ago, but the requests have gone largely unfulfilled. He said he was able to get some of the FDA's information on unpublished studies from other researchers who acquired it from the agency through their own record requests.

The 'Effect Size'

In this week's study, the researchers found that failing to publish negative findings inflated the reported effectiveness of all 12 of the antidepressants studied, which were approved between 1987 and 2004. The researchers used a measurement called effect size. The larger the effect size, the greater the impact of a treatment.

The average effect size of the antidepressant Zoloft rose 64% by the failure to publish negative or questionable data on the drug, the researchers found.

Write to David Armstrong at david.armstrong@wsj.com1 and Keith J. Winstein at keith.winstein@wsj.com2

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the video is as powerful as the song...

brett dennen has made a video of my fave tunes.

just. wow.



ETA: h/t to earl for this:

A brief description of the video from Brett himself:

"It is our routines and our comforts that allow us to ignore social issues. For some of us, it is our privilege to be ignorant. This video tells the story of social issues challenging our privileges and entering our routines making them impossible to ignore. Social injustice cannot be ignored when you are forced to deal with them. That is the idea behind this video.

What would happen if you were forced to deal with something that you may think has nothing to do with you? If suddenly the world's problems came into your own home? You would have to realize that you are connected to everything and everyone one earth."

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13 February 2008

i don't trust suits. part deux.

didya get a load of what the senate overwhelmingly passed yesterday?

i mean, who needs terrorists when our own elected officials are actively working to "destroy our freedom?"

warrantless wiretapping, with zero oversight by anyone except those orchestrating the spying, is now perfectly legal. the phone companies have immunity for their past and future abuses - of which some 40 odd lawsuits have sprung up. because they broke the law.

"The Senate had multiple opportunities to improve this atrocious bill and failed at every turn," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Several amendments were offered to increase privacy protections, with many of them allowing for warrantless surveillance during emergency situations. It’s stunning that senators wouldn’t put their support behind amendments so fundamentally balanced. Protecting Americans' communications from pervasive and ill-defined surveillance goes to the very heart of the Fourth Amendment. Unfortunately, the Senate seemed determined to pass the least constitutional FISA bill possible."


yes, that IS stunning, isn't it? and even more stunning? these senators were the only ones that voted nay:

Akaka (D-HI)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brown (D-OH)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Cardin (D-MD)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Harkin (D-IA)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schumer (D-NY)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Wyden (D-OR)





the kicker is that all of this is coming from the party of "the least amount of government interference in citizen's lives" - the right. and the bigger kicker is the number of democrats that voted for this.

i'd like to think they are basing this on some level of intelligence that we don't know about, but i've seen how that works in this administration.



my mama didn't raise no fool.

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12 February 2008

i don't trust suits

that's right. i don't trust suits. you have your stereotypes, i have mine. granted, mine are deeply rooted in opposite land - as it would appear from my social psychology course this term.

but it digress.

suits.

i fully understand that in our culture the suit is a status symbol. for many an onlooker, it is the epicenter of what the aforementioned many deem to be a "success." if one wears a suit, it is understood that said suit wearer is dedicated, powerful, a good contributing member of society and is situated in a position far far "above" the majority of the world's citizens. or so he would like to think. seriously, friends - this little Gambling Project Smoke And Mirrors set-up we've created/"live" in is enormously clever.

now me, on the other hand...

i see a suit, and i immediately wonder how much of my money will be attempted to be coerced from me via fear talk and lies from the mouth of a yesman. line of work? doesn't matter. that really sounds more bitter than it is. it is just what it is.

exhibit a: click here.
see? i'll take bets on whether that meeting is about saving you or i any money or grief.

i don't trust suits.


and it is because of this that i realized what my off feeling was when i would see obama speak - the one that i had up until two nights ago when he was answering a question about education.

i don't remember all of the specifics, but he was answering it and talking about how parents need to be active in their children's lives also.

to which i replied, "what? what about single moms working three sorely underpaid back-breaking jobs to keep food in the house and only sees her kids for 2 hours a day?!" at the exact same time i was saying that to will - i also had that feeling - you know it - the i was wrong! he's yet another completely out-of-touch politician. and i voted for him.

no sooner were the words from lips when obama spoke again, about how we also needed to take into consideration, the struggle of the single mother...

hell. yeah.

and i FINALLY nailed down that "off" feeling.

obama doesn't seem like he should be wearing a suit.

obama isn't a suit.

as it stands, the majority of "us" thinks we MUST have a leader. and that's why i hope obama wins this game.

obama isn't a suit.

and these dudes rock too.

p/s - if anyone wants to make up their own little caption for the picture, i won't stop you.

xoxoxox




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07 February 2008

so, um, yeah. pathology reports are in...

let me first say that i'am not freaking out. when the initial results of what shall hereforth be called 'the lump' came back as possibly scary, i freaked out. (inserting 'lost' reference here) but as jack would say, i let myself be afraid to the count of 5... i decided then "if" it was "something" - i would kick its ass, and it would be sorry it ever came to live in kara. 'cause that's how i do.

i just want to talk about this. it makes no sense. and while i'm not freaking out, i'am concerned.

right as i was leaving for class tonight, my surgeon's nurse called with the pathology report. she said that the lump was benign. whew! then she said that it was a particular type of tumor, (i believe phyllodes? my phonetic scribbling as she spoke turned up nothing on a google search) that may come back. she said they may just watch it, they may have to go back in and remove the surrounding tissue.

benign? more surgery? i asked why, if it was benign, would they need to do further tissue removal? she put me on hold and asked the other doctor, as my doc is out until monday. she got back on, told me not to worry, but that another surgery was a possibility. my doc would need to look at the pathology report and compare that to what she saw during surgery to give the best guess.

so i counted to 5... and to be honest, i've counted to five a few times tonight, in my head. sometimes one has to do it more than once.

i still don't know how benign can spread. do you? have you ever heard of such a thing? if so, spill. i'm all ears.

i think i'm going to call again tomorrow and see if i can find out anything else. i'm a specifics grrrrl. i like having all the info.

while you're here - could you head over yonder and click your mouse?

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02 February 2008

the surgery

just a quick note... i really appreciate all of the well-wishes, healing vibes and lovely notes you all have sent me. i'm trying my darndest to respond to everyone, but i'm sleepy, owie and groggy. i've never understood the love of painkillers - i can't stand not being able to think clearly, but pain is no fun, either. the hardest part is that i can't pick up bebe for two weeks. he doesn't understand. he keeps trying to pretend to grab my owie and throw it over his shoulder. he says he is "getting rid of the owie surgery for mommy." sweet bebe.

so after a sleepless night thursday, we got up bright and early to head for the hospital. after talking to the anesthesiologist, he decided on a local with i.v. sedation. i was happy that i wouldn't be completely knocked out. or so i thought. i was out like light for the duration, but woke up while still in the surgery area, as they were rolling me out. i was alert enough that i skipped recovery and went straight to phase 2. after drinking a little and eating some crackers, i was on my way home!

my surgeon told will that she didn't think it looked like cancer and the results would be back sometime next week. my mom is up until sunday, helping me with bebe, while will works... they are having a grand time together!

and oddly enough - it feels really strange to know that something that has been growing inside of my breast for 17 years is now gone... i can't really explain it. i do feel much better now that it is out - it is as if a weight has been lifted from me. but in the same breath, i have watched/felt it grow for over like half of my life!

and now i'm off to rest. i think i did too much yesterday. i started running a fever last night, though i think that's probably normal. today i promised myself i would go easier... i'm going to try my hardest. :)

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