Pffffffffft.
That pretty much sums up the past week or two. You know that feeling? When the cards just don’t seem to fall in your favor… again and again and again?
Some of the drama is real, like putting my cat to sleep last week. That blew.
Some of the drama is of the ridiculously minor, somebody call a wahmbulance, variety of nonsense: like getting stopped at not one, but two drawbridges; barely surviving a few mornings with shitty coffee; getting 2 parking tickets and having 3 baking fails. First world problems. I’m ashamed I’m even mentioning them.
Some of it is totally absurd, like this never-ending fluttering I have in my left ear that has me CONVINCED there is a moth living in there. Shut up! It can happen! Odds are it’s probably a dog hair, since Lotte has been living with one of Carson’s hairs in her ear for about 6 months now. Yeah, I said it: MY KID HAS HAD A DOG HAIR IN HER EAR FOR 6 MONTHS. Her pediatrician swears it’s not affecting her at all and will just fall out on its own. Excellent! Nice. Fucking. Parenting.
Some of the drama, though, is legitimately freaking me out. A few weeks ago I made 2 doctors appointments: one to get the all-clear to make babies again, and the other to find out why my hair has been falling out. For the past 6 months I’ve had a ton of hair loss. Nothing noticeable: it’s not like I have a head full of bald patches and frizz and look like some sort of crazy hoarder with messy, overstuffed closets and children with animal hair in their ears. Nothing like that! You know how women lose some hair after they give birth? It’s like that, but never-ending. My ponytail is super thin, and, well, let’s face it: the hypochondriac in me is screaming “YOU’RE GOING BALD! YOU’RE DYING! YOU HAVE SOME INSANE BACTERIAL HAIR-SHEDDING WORM LIVING IN YOUR SCALP EATING THROUGH YOUR SKULL!!”.
The dermatologist, a MAN, might I add, took one half-assed look at my scalp, gave my hair a few tugs and said, “Eh, looks fine to me. Probably just seasonal. Call me if it gets worse.”. Even after assuring him that I had easily lost 50% of my (very thick) hair in 6 months and it was pretty worrisome and damaging to my self-esteem (and WHAT ABOUT THE BACTERIAL HAIR-SHEDDING SKULL EATING WORM?!?): he was WAY more into my freckles and moles. I’m pretty fair-skinned. While I now wear sunscreen almost every day, when I was a teenager I was a little more lax about it (ie: Coppertone oil).
Before I knew it I was lying face-down and he was scooping some wayward freckle off the middle of my back to send off for a biopsy. So now I was going to be a frizzy-haired hoarder with bald patches, messy, overstuffed closets AND skin cancer? Perfect. The biopsy results would be back in a week and they’d call me.
Two days later I went to the baby doctor to find out if my lady parts are good to go (meanwhile, I now have a nasty open hole in my back which my husband has to clean twice a day. Sexy!). He tells me everything looks good (TMI?), but just to be sure he wants to send me for a sonogram of my left ovaries and get some blood work. Knowing that I’m a seasoned Dr. of Google and WebMD and he can’t get anything past me, my doc mutters about the sonogram while walking out the door in order to avoid my 9000 questions. I hear him whisper to the nurse to draw blood and test my thyroid (could explain the hair sitch), beta and rubella. RUBELLA?!? The nurse hardly has the door open before I’m all “He seriously thinks I could have RUBELLA?! Like, the mumps?! WHAT?!”. She just shrugged her shoulders and told me to lay down and make a fist (I’m a fainter.). The results would be ready in a week. So now I was going to be a frizzy-haired hoarder with bald patches, messy overstuffed closets, skin cancer, RUBELLA and what? What’s wrong with my stupid left ovary? WAS IT THE BACTERIAL HAIR-SHEDDING SKULL EATING WORM?! Had he traveled down to my ovaries? Fuck.
A week later I called for the sonogram and blood work results. They didn’t have them. 10 days later I called: they’re on the doctor’s desk and he’ll call me. Two week mark comes: they’re still on the doctor’s desk. No word. I could have perished from rubella by now. WTF? Worst doctor ever. It’s almost been 3 weeks and I still haven’t heard my grim fate.
Last Tuesday, though, JUST as I was walking out the door to drive to Long Island to put my cat to sleep, the dermatologist called. Two weeks had passed, and I had kind of assumed no news was good news. Not so much. The biopsy results showed a severe Dysplastic Nevus. He rambled on and on with a bunch of technical jargon until I finally interrupted him to simply ask, “Wait, WAIT a second… do I have cancer?”. The answer was no, but it is considered “pre-cancerous”, and they have to scoop out a lot of the tissue surrounding it and send THAT off to get biopsied, and it does mean I am more likely to get skin cancer at some point than people with negative biopsies. It’s a terrifying warning for me to shelve the bikinis and buy some tunics. Or muumuus. Or probably full-body armor… because balding women with messy closets, rubella and busted ovaries wearing full-body armor are super hot.
So that’s what’s been going on.
At least I have this:
Thank GAWD for the sweet kid (despite dog hair in her ear), lattes, chocolate croissants and little pink ponies.