Rain and Mammarygrams (Updated)

BITACLE.ORG steals content. JESUS GLEZ is a THIEF. If you are reading this post on BITACLE.ORG, you are supporting theft of intellectual property. This post was written and copyrighted by CREEKHIKER, who has not given consent for material to be reproduced. Please visit CREEKHIKER to enjoy this content LEGALLY. If you want to know why this message is at the top of every post, read this post.

*****************

We finally got some much needed rain. The problem with California rain is, it either pours so hard you start to ponder how to build an ark or... it just pisses down... a fine mist for days on end, just enough to make the roads slick and amounting to maybe a quarter inch over 2 days time. We have the latter.

It was the kind of day I don't really mind staying home. But I had plans that involved an hour drive to Anaheim to see a dear friend (and her hubby) from my Carol Duvall days. I saw at least six accidents on the drive down... two of which involved only one car. This was one of them.



I had a wonderful dinner at a packed Cheesecake Factory in Brea. We ordered the Factory Favorites: "A Combination of Our Favorite Appetizers including: Avocado Eggrolls, Spinach and Cheese Dip, Pot Stickers, Summer Rolls, Quesadilla, Corn Cakes, Buffalo Blasts and Calamari" and split a vanilla bean cheesecake slice for dessert. Yum.

My friend is in Anaheim for the Craft & Hobby show and has a book signing tomorrow. This is a really big (the biggest) show for craft wholesalers in the country. And I know so many people that will be there, it's good to get out and network and also get a few orders placed (good deals for ordering at the show) for the shop which is frightfully low on inventory. So, I'll be back down there all day tomorrow and dinner with more friends tomorrow night. And then back to the job on Monday...UGH... I really hate working for someone else.

On the way back home, my favorite chat / news channel was talking about the recently released study saying that fewer and fewer women over 40 are getting their mammograms. The male host of this show was pondering why.

Well, buddy, let me tell you. If you had to get your penis smashed flat between to layers of metal not once, not twice, but three times, just how often would you go to your doctor? And we lucky ladies get to do that twice. For you fellas out there, that's horizontal, vertical and diagonal...EACH BOOB. And yes, it hurts!

I myself haven't been in several years. My sister would kill me if she knew. Between trying to find time to schedule it, the pain and fact that my insurance doesn't cover much... it just seems like too much trouble.

And before any one with breast cancer gets all indignant with me... I know the risks. It is very prevalent in my family -- among smokers (men and women), which I am not. I know that doesn't take away my risk. But, I've been through so much with my sister having it.

She was diagnosed in December 1992 and had a radical mastectomy on New Year's Eve that year. 1993, I flew to Baton Rouge many times to help out, taking her to chemo and radiation, cutting her hair to because she was bawling every time she found a clump of hair in the house, helping my mom try and heal the massive burns that Sis got on her chest.

Sis made it 10 years & one month before the darn stuff came back, this time wrapped around her neck. It was paralyzing her. Her only option was proton radiation - A wonderful thing developed for treating prostate cancer. It can get the radiation into the most accurate spot. Since there was a risk of burning a hole in her spinal cord, thus making her a paraplegic with electron radiation, this was her only option. She and Mom moved in with me for almost four months. Within two weeks, I knew the treatment was working.

Now, there's another tumor in the hollow of her back, right above her right butt cheek. They say it does not have a high enough sugar rating to be cancer and it can't really grow where it is but there is nothing they can do. Sis says it's like having a charley horse all the way from her behind to her toes ALL THE TIME. She is only comfortable standing.

After witnessing all this, I can't say any of it is for me. Maybe it's because I never married or had kids and my family is far away but I just wouldn't put myself through all that. I'm not made of the right stuff. Funny thing is, my sister calls me the strong one. She's wrong. She's the steel magnolia. I'm just the wuss who ran away from home.