here we go again......Caution--unladylikelanguage ahead

hey universe!

Sitting in an airport bar tossing back a VERY large beer before boarding the plane for home. [sing tralala for free airport wifi!]   After two weeks of crazy stupid travel--coast to coast and up and down and a stint in a hotel with No room service and NO BAR [did anyone think such things really exist????]  I am soooo glad to get home tonight even though once I get home, I have to stop ducking reality and schedule a few more appointments.

As for the fuckityfuck, I cannot tell a lie.  I stole it from Hugh Grant in "Four Weddings and a Funeral."  Neat movie, I must say.

Anyrate, I actually think that ignoring it for a while was good.  I am feeling pretty calm and level and mellow.

then again, perhaps its the 20oz beer........

waiting waiting waiting.  Today --any minute this morning I would think--is the day for the results of Monday's biopsy.  It was VERY very small--he could hardly find it.  So I am optimistic that it is nothing--no news is good news right?

On the aspiration/cyst thing I am not so happy.  First off the doctor who did it was Mr. Personality NOT.  Why such a person was removed from his darkened lab to deal with live human beings who are only in the place because they are dealing with the spector of breast cancer escapes me.  But the even bigger problem is there was no analysis/pathology of the substance that came out of the cyst.  And frankly it was icky looking---exactly like what you think of when you get told your cancer cells are comodo with necrosis. . . .  Now I have had numerous aspirations of my thyroid for cysts and its always nothing and the doctor always says its nothing but that is ALWAYS followed by "but to be on the safe side, lets send it to the lab."

To be on the safe side.

With Dr.Personality NOT, there is no safe side because he tossed the fluid into the trash.  No path, no nothing, just a medieval-ish examination by eye and proclaimation that it was fine.

In as much as the only reason that it was getting aspirated in the first place was to make sure it was nothing because I have already been treated for stupidbreastcancer I am not so happy right now.

I kvetched to my surgeon's office and to my oncologist but what can you do after the stuff is in the trash?

No problem really, I was looking for something to keep worrying about between now and my next mammogram and thanks to Dr. Personality NOT, even if the biopsy is fine, I'll still have something to justify the continual consumption of extra dark chocolate. . . .

waiting waiting waiting. 

and the results are in:   Atypical Lobular Hyperplasia. . . .aka pre-DCIS.  Which means a surgical biopsy this Thursday to make sure there isn't any DCIS hiding in there as well.  And DON'T get confused:  Its just a surgical biopsy, not a a lumpectomy.....even though I can't eat after midnight and have a new prescription for percocet and will be sedated and  there's a lump of me being ectomyed away.  N-O-T a L-U-M-P-E-C-T-O-M-Y  says my surgeon.  Lumpectomies can be disfiguring.....this is just a little tiny bit going away. . . 

okay then I feel fine. . .

I remind myself that if its anything at this point, it is precancer.  We shall hope for the best on Thursday.  This time, I am NOT going back to work the next day which brings me to the REAL stress in my life--work and my insane hoarding 81 year old mother but mostly work.

I have a supervisor who doesn't like me--lets call him Lord Vader.  Now Lord Vader never did like me --even thought I shouldn't be hired [thought we should have a more diverse office and I'm just another middle aged white broad and I know this because he told me to my face] but that was when he wasn't a supervisor so who cared.  But now Lord Vader is a supervisor and, because the actual head of the office [Obi Wan] is out being treated for throat cancer, Lord Vader is the only supervisor.  And he really really really doesn't like me.

At mid-yr review time right before I had my surgery but after I said the situation to my office, he gave me a list of complaints about my performance.  The next review was in July and while my review grade was good--even got a bonus--, the words were awful.  Indeed if you read the words, you would never understand the review--heck, you'd wonder how I was keeping my job.  In as much as a big hunk of the complaint had to do with my slowness at completing projects [during the time I was having rads], and my work on the project prior to surgery [which got compliments from other offices] was ignored, I went to my Obi Wan and Lord Vader  to ask to include a letter from my doctor with dates re my diagnois, surgeries, radiation, radiation pneumonitis etc.  They proposed making changes to the wording. We met 1st week Sept--both supervisors and me-- they made the firsts proclaimation that I had always been an awful employee [now that was a blindside] but agreed to some sort of re-write. 

Post meeting,  I worked very hard on the issues which were complained about.  I started coming in at 7:45am, working to 5:30 [no overtime] and did absolutely everything that was asked of me. The colleague that I was working with thanked me for all my help in the last month etc.

So on Friday right after I scheduled the surgery, Lord Vader comes into my office and lays into me about project, accuses me of not making changes to a document that he had told me to do, claims I didn't do anything on it [including the last month] complains that I never got back to him on rewrite and tells me "everyone in the office thinks its punishment to have to work with you."  I specifically ask if "everyone" includes the woman who thanked me and get told "Yes."  And he goes on to say how I was awful, always was awful etc.  He could not point out the email in which he ordered me to make the changes but insists that I didn't do it.

In as much as I am fairly confident this one woman [of all the people in the world] is not the type who would say one thing to my face and another to him, I am realizing that this problem is personality between Lord Vader and I as much as anything else. I am considering that maybe Lord Vader doesn't really think I had breast cancer or that he considers breast cancer not to be "real" cancer---I soldiered through a lot of it, didn't complain, didn't flash my top to show off my zapped boobie or my scars, was always up-beat etc.  It was only these last two weeks--when I had to have the next biopsy--that I just drew a line and said I can't do a stereotactic biopsy in the am and fly out that afternoon for a business trip. Lord Vader was the one who ended up covering the trip for me. When Lord Vader talks about ObiWan with throat cancer,Lord Vader is always talking about how dreadful radiation is and how tired it makes people and I say "yes, I know."  I mean I get that throat cancer is worse than my breast cancer but rads is rads and it sucks.

I haven't a clue how to deal with it. I can't put in the hours I did in my youth, the kind of endless days that always endear one to a boss. For one thing, I'm just plain tired.  For another I have three kids and I like them and like spending time with them not to mention my husband.  We won't even start on what those hours would do to my already rough-at-times marriage.  In this job market another job is really not likely especially when you factor my age into it.  And I'm the sole breadwinner in the family so I need this job.

Sigh.  I don't expect any answers.  I guess I needed to vent more than I thought.  The first clue was probably being able to wake up this morning at 6:30 in the dark without an alarm. hmmm, I am thinking that my therapist might uping my dose of anti-depressants at our next meeting.