Fight Like A Mom

Tomorrow is October, which marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. However, that means today it is still September for one more day. And September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. That is what has been on my heart and mind all week. I am no stranger to childhood cancer. Or cancer at all. Acute myeloid leukemia robbed me of my mother 18 years ago. My dear cousin Heather battled ALL as a teen. I can think of four other classmates from my small town that battled their own cancers. Another sweet friend from Talladega was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. And then there's Emma, sweet, energetic, bright Emma. So Cancer and I are not strangers. But I became more intimately acquainted with the bastard that is Pediatric Cancer this week through the stories of Aidan and Donna. Those are hard stories to read, especially in light of what my family is facing right now, but they are filled with faith and hope and love and strength. They are also filled with what I see as horrible injustice. Not just to Aidan and Donna but to all of our children.

The National Cancer Institute, the government's (our tax dollars) research arm, spends only 4% of it's budget on pediatric cancer research. Four percent. That's only $26.4 million dollars. For leukemia, brain cancer, bone cancer, ALL THE CANCERS OF CHILDHOOD. Compare that to the $254 million AIDS receive and the $584 million allocated to breast cancer. Just typing those statistics has brought me to tears. Breast cancer is a bitch, a heartless bitch that steals so much from so many. I have read so many stories of how the insidious part of breast cancer is how it strikes at a woman's femininity and allure. Yes, women have to brutally chop off their breasts, the first outward sign of womanhood that we all long for so fervently in our childhood, breasts that we have nurtured our children with, breasts that we enticed our lovers with. I am not discounting that. However, treatments for childhood cancers steal from the future, things children don't even know were theirs to begin with. Aidan's Army reports these as the most common long term effects of treatment:

1.  Radiation to a child’s brain can significantly damage cognitive function, limit the ability to read, write, do basic math, tell time or even talk.

2.  Physical and neurocognitive disabilities resulting from treatment may prevent childhood cancer survivors from fully participating in school, social activities and eventually work, which can cause depression and feelings of isolation.

3.  Childhood cancer survivors have difficulty getting married and obtaining jobs, health and life insurance

4.  Cancer treatments can affect a child's growth, fertility, and endocrine system.  Child survivors may be permanently immunologically suppressed.

5.  Childhood cancer survivors are at significant risk for secondary cancers later in life.

6.  Loss of limbs, or shortened limbs whose growth was stunted.

7.  Cataracts, poor vision, damage to the optic nerve or other effects to the eye.

8.  Hearing loss.

9.  Cardiac problems including an abnormal heartbeat, congestive heart failure and increased risk of a stroke or blood clots.

10.  Kidney failure.

11.  Weak or thin bones that can break easily.

12.  Teeth and jaw problems including missing teeth, smaller teeth, tooth decay and gum

Part of the problem is that all of the currently approved drugs (and there has not been a new one approved in 20 years) are adult drugs. Think about that. Think of the heated debated over vaccinations. The furor over BPAs in baby bottles.  All of the trivial hot buttons that fill innumerable message boards. Then think about critically ill child being poisoned with decades old technology that have only been approved for adult use. Would you give YOUR child an adult medicine that had not been improved on in over 2 decades? For anything? No, you wouldn't.

 Why are the children, the babies as I call anyone under 18 at work, being treated so horribly? One of the rallying cries for Breast Cancer Awareness is "Fight Like A Girl!" I titled this "Fight Like A Mom" because the disparity in research funding offends me as a mother. Moms are the ones that sacrifice, do without, eat the fried chicken wing instead of a breast, all so our kids can have what they need and be able to thrive and be happy. We need to do more to ensure childhood cancer research gets more attention and much needed research. For Aidan. For Donna. For Emma. For all the tomorrows that are being stolen in some form or another by cancer.

Walk That Walk

Thanks to Texts From Last Night, I know all about the walk of shame. In my many trips around the sun, I have never had occasion to experience this as either the walker or the walkee. Until now.

I went on a work related conference that included an overnight stay. Normally, this is cause for great celebration because the conference is at one of the nicer hotels around, children are not allowed and it's a mini-vacation from work without the guilt of not being at work since technically it is work. I think there's supposed something about building supervisory capacities and networking with colleagues in there, too, but those are secondary.

One minor drawback to this conference is that the participants are required to share rooms. Since there were three of us my office going, I assumed I would be rooming with one of them, as always. If you are reading this, you are my friend and surely by now know that I don't like people. I don't like being touched. I don't like socializing. I don't like having my "space" invaded. And this is with my friends and people I love. I had been mentally preparing myself for sharing a room with a friend for days and was ready! I could do this!

When the three of us checked in, Nicole and Wanda were given keys to the same room and mine had a different number on it. No, that couldn't be right. That would mean that I was rooming with neither of them. I quickly reasoned out that since I registered for this conference after the deadline, I was in a room by myself. Nicole, utilizing her wealth of social work skills, comforted me with the knowledge that she saw a name on the check in list next to mine. She coolly pulled rank and shot down my plan of sleeping in her car. As always, I offered to spell "insubordination" for her when she wrote me up.

Instead of going up to our dooms, ummm, rooms, we decided to skip the dinner at the hotel. After dinner, we went shopping because that's what women do. Despite posts that may or may not have been made on Facebook regarding the trip, shoe shopping and Hell, I did have a good time. My ability to look at not just shoes, not even a shoe sale but SEVENTY PERCENT OFF SHOES without so much as an inkling of interest pass through my body still astounds many of my friends. Same with purses. One friend had the nerve to text me and tell me to go to the Coach store and sniff the purses. That's just wrong.

We got back to the hotel some time after 9. I felt like I was going to my doom. Walking the 1589 miles from the elevator to the room, I had convinced myself that this was not going to be as bad as I thought and I would survive. I admit that in the eternity between sliding the key card in the slot and waiting on the green light, I prayed a thousand prayers that there was no one in the room. My heart soared with hope when I turned the knob and pushed open the door and broke in to a million shards when I realized the break-in bar was engaged.

My "Honey, I'm home!" was met with a slight yelp and half glimpses of a figure in a very skimpy robe flitting around the room like a hummingbird, picking up things and moving stuff around, including what I am 93% sure was a towel from her bed. I introduced myself and I think she told me her name. Maybe. She was too busy clutching the itty bitty robe closed and making apologies for having her belongings every where. Was it Kim? Diane? My mind kept wanting to remember her name as Mulva. (Damn you, Jerry Seinfeld!)

Kim/Diane (Mulva) flitted to the bathroom and came out in pajamas that she clearly had not been wearing when I got there. We made some awkward small talk for a few minutes about the conference, the oil spill, an embarrassing drug bust from my county that had made the regional news. She arranged for a 6:30 wake up call and told me that she had already bathed so I could have the shower first thing.

What followed was one of the longest, most miserable nights of my life. The air did not work and the temperature only reinforced the feeling of being in Hell. Sleep came in fitful spurts. I would lay awake, heart pounding with anxiety (how am I supposed to sleep with a stranger 4 feet away? Please God, don't let the shrimp etouffee I ate for dinner come back to embarrassingly haunt me.) until I would doze off. After about 15-20 minutes of sweat drenched sleep, I'd wake with a start, convinced that Mulva was standing over me in the dark waiting to, ironically, stab me with a fork. I almost wept with relief when the phone rang at 6:32.

Mulva (Kim? Was it Kim??) shot out of her bad as fast as any bad cliche I could write. Before I could even sit up, she announced that she would brush her teeth and then the bathroom would be all mine. By the time I got out of the shower, it was only 6:55 and she was already fully dressed, packed and ready to go. Huh? Was I such a bad roomie that she had to leave so quickly? I know I snore on occasion but didn't think I had a chance to do any serious log sawing in 15 minute increments.

I was perplexed. How dare she run out on me like that?! I didn't even know her name or what she looked like. I couldn't point her out to Wanda and Nicole. Worse, I couldn't talk about my experience during any of the lectures because I didn't know who her friends/colleagues might be. Every time I saw someone that resembled the blur that was Mulva, I cringed, especially if she was talking to someone else. Was Mulva going around telling people about what a horrible roomie I was? What if I talked in my sleep? Oh lordy! How do people do this to themselves??

I Review An Episode of Doctor Who

I have watched one whole episode of THE GREATEST SHOW THAT WAS, IS AND EVER SHALL BE (or so I've been told). And since this is America, that makes me more than qualified to render an opinion on this, and many other tangentially related, topics.

The episode I watched was "Rose" from 2005 and featured the Doctor in the pimping leather jacket. Speaking of pimping, the first 10 minutes or so reminded me of a bad porn, minus the porn, with the lighting, mood and scene set up. Plus, the chick had porn actress lips.

Bow chicka wow wow

If you've seen 5 minutes of porn,and I'm betting all of you have, you know what I'm talking about. It's impossible to look at them and not wonder where they've been or why they might be so puffy. Anyways, I've always been intrigued about how you're supposed to watch this show since it's been airing since 1788 or something like that. In my family, if you miss the first five minutes of a movie, you're screwed and you may as well kill yourself instead of trying to muddle through without those pivotal opening minutes. So how in the bloody hell (see what I did there?) are you supposed to just pick this show up at any point and know what's going on. I was very pleased with how things were explained without being heavy handed and pedantic or treating the viewer like they were totally brain dead, like most American shows do.

Do you see the moron?

I'm not going to discuss the actual story, there's no need to. One thing I do know is that if you watch this show, you really watch this show and can wax poetic on every single, minute detail of everything ever related to it. That dustbin that ate the nice bloke? A true fan can tell you every piece of rubbish that was ever deposited in it. No fooling.

Typical Doctor Who Fan

The acting was cheesy, slightly above bad porn level, but not unbearable. The effects were cheesy, which I've been told are part of the charm of the show and a BBC thing. 

SPOILER ALERT! The Doctor gets a new TARDIS next season.

Overall, I would rate the show as tolerable and something I could watch again and actually pay attention to, sorta. In every day terms, that would be better than Kate + 8 but not as good as iCarly.

White Girl Problem #45

Annabeth had to have bloodwork recently, a task that is not easy to accomplish. She doesn't do well with medical procedures, this oddly healthy middle Heathen, and some intreresting and dramatic times have ensued during her rare forays in to the world of hurty things to make you better. Yes, this is the child that told me she needed medicinal marijuana as the doctor was repairing her ripped off toenail last year. Usually an obscure quote or two and a nice threat of something vile happening (I'm a big fan of breaking off toes and fingers for some reason.) plus an ocean of tears (Another paranthetical here, God have mercy on whatever male falls for this one because the tears she can shed with those big blue eyes and the freckles and the...it's bad.) and she can be convinced to cooperate. I was feeling so bad that morning with my own health problems, I had to actually rely on Tradional Mothering Tactics and let the tech work with her patient. And let me tell you, this little girl was good. She did a great job talking to Annabeth, giving her a choice about where she wanted to be stuck, giving her time to process and breathe, didn't even look mortified when I replied "I don't know, it's been a while since I stabbed her" to questions about how easily she bled. Fabulous job with a difficult situation and things were going so smoothly. We were almost done and then "OH MY GOD! DON'T LET HER STAND UP!! LOOK HOW PALE SHE IS!" A nurse that had nothing to with Annabeth walked by and saw her face and decided she was about to pass out. She barged in, threw a trash can around and was barking orders to the tech, the tech who was doing an amazing job. I kept insisting Annabeth was fine. Annabeth said she was fine but this woman insisted my child was about to pass out and throw up. She was nice enough to get a cold cloth for us which really helped clean up from all the tears. Then she left. The point of this? Annabeth was not even pale. She's just one of my kids.