You Call This Sam Adams?

I'm a history purist.  Or snob.  Take your pick.  I love my history anyway I can get it, and I don't mind historical fiction at all.  I love it in fact.  But when you are THE HISTORY CHANNEL, and you are producing a program called "The Sons of Liberty" based on well-documented real-life people about actual events that happened in our country which caused our country to become a united nation, then freaking get it right!  These are not fictional characters.  These are not made up events.  I get the idea that you have to condense/combine/omit things, but for goodness sake, at least get the main people right!

Don't get me wrong.  I am enjoying "The Sons of Liberty" as a piece of historical fiction because I know the real truth.  What bothers me is that many people who watch this will think this is how things really happened because it was on THE HISTORY CHANNEL.  I think when you bill yourself as that, you have a responsibility to get it right on shows that are about real people and real events.

For example, Samuel Adams.  I will freely admit that Sam on SOL is very easy on the eyes and his badass ways make the show really exciting to watch.  He is smoking hot, HOWEVER, in real life, Sam may have been a badass, but he was born in 1722, making him in his 50s during the Revolutionary War period.

Here is a picture of Sam Adams from SOL.  Does this guy look 50 to you?

This is a portrait of the REAL Samuel Adams, painted in 1772, when he was 50.  Do you see any resemblance between the two?  No, me neither.

I'm watching the show the other night as Sam is chased through the streets of Boston, and it looks like Kyle is playing Assassin's Creed 3, with all of the jumping from rooftop to rooftop.  The chase was fun to watch, but real? No way.  The actual Sam would have thrown his back out doing something like that!

Then there is the way that THE HISTORY CHANNEL plays up all of the stereotypes and mythology surrounding the American Revolution.  The homeless, alcoholic Sam Adams...The clandestine love affair between Dr. Warren and Margaret Gage...The brutality of the British soldiers...George Washington showing up in his uniform to the 1st Continental Congress (it was the 2nd)...Paul Revere's midnight ride shouting, "The British are coming!" No, he didn't get into a fight with British soldiers BEFORE getting to Lexington.  He was actually arrested AFTER warning the citizens the Regulars were on their way.

And there is so much more!

I realized after the first night that THE HISTORY CHANNEL'S promo, "To learn the real story behind the Revolution, go to thehistorychannel.com," was a clue that this was not exactly a factual show, and that just really irritated me.  Americans know precious little enough about the men and women who risked it all to make this country.  You are THE HISTORY CHANNEL.  Please don't add to their ignorance.

Thinking About a Job...And Feeling Sick

So Kirk tells me the other day that I may need to get a job.   There are a lot of moving parts right now, and an additional income, no matter how small, would be a nice buffer.

I was like, "WTH?"

I haven't worked a "real job" in 17 years.  I taught from 1991-1996 around the country and then one miserable school year in 1997-98 here in Louisville.  My teaching certificate has now expired, and I would need to get my Master's Degree in order to teach again, and I don't want to do either one of those things.  I was a facilitator for Catholic Charities' Insights program for awhile.  I took pictures for Louisville Catholic Sports last year, but I have done nothing for which I've gotten paid a decent salary in almost 20 years.

This is not to say that these past 20 years have seen me sitting on the couch and eating bonbons.  No sirree.  I have been a busy, busy mother, wife, daughter, sister, and friend for the past two decades.  I've volunteered at schools, both grade schools and high schools.  I've volunteered at historic homes, church, and charity events.  I've raised money, raised awareness, and raised hell.  I've made costumes, painted houses, refinished furniture, landscaped yards, sold homes, canned food, resettled refugees, and taken care of elderly relatives.  I've helped both of my parents move from this life to the next.  I submitted hundred thousand dollar budgets and represented a dozen committees at the parish council.  I've spent hours in doctors' offices with loved ones, run errands for sick friends, and made countless meals for people who were sick or sad or lonely.  I've fought a government entity and took some pretty freaking amazing photographs.  I've written blogs and poems and letters to the editor.  I even wrote a song once, but that is a story for another day.

Now I'm told I should maybe think about getting a part-time job, and I'm thinking, "What the hell am I supposed to do?"

Despite all that I have done, I really have no skills that I can market.  I am technologically illiterate.  I have no idea how to use a smart board or a smart phone or Dropbox or an iPad.  If I did go back to teaching, I'd be so far behind the times that I'd be asking for the overhead projector.  I don't want to work retail or substitute teach (pull my fingernails out, please).  I need flexibility for my kids because they still need me.

I am spoiled, and I will admit that I love being able to be home with my kids when they are sick.  I love being a room mom and going to awards' ceremonies and prayer groups.  I like having the days off that my kids are off.  I want to be home for them and drive them where they need to go.  In a mere 3 years, yes, three years, Emily will be driving, and my Mom's Taxi Service will go out of business.  Wow.  I just now realized that.  I have been driving kids around for nineteen years, and in three more, that chapter will close.  Well, that makes me sad.

So, what can I do?

I'm trying to think of some skill that I have that I can market, but I have no idea what that would be.

Any suggestions???

January 6, 2015: The Day That Changed My Life

I have no excuse.

Well, that's a lie, because I do have an excuse, just not a very good one. Actually I have lots of excuses and none of them are any good, but that doesn't change the fact that the last mammogram I had on record before January 6, 2015 was done in 2009.

Straight up...I hate mammograms. But I hate going to the gynecologist even more, and I didn't think I could get a mammogram without orders from the gynecologist, and since I didn't go get my annual, I didn't get a mammogram either. Stupid, I know, and the reason I didn't go to the gynecologist has less to do with the prodding and probing than the fact that I had to get on a scale.

I used to weigh a lot more than I wanted to. After Emily was born, I weighed more than I had in my life. The nurse at my OBGYN scolded me a year after Emily was born because I didn't drop the baby weight like I did after Claire. The next year, she commented again, and I decided to get serious about it, so I went on Weight Watchers and lost a lot of weight. Then after my mom died, I started gaining it back. At the last visit to my now GYN (no more OB for me, thank you very much), the nurse said my weight out loud and commented, "You're up 15 pounds from two years ago. You'd better get on top of this, or it will become more of an issue than it already is."

I knew that already, and what I felt was shame.

So I didn't go back. For five years.

Stupid, I know, but I admit it. I feel like an alcoholic in the beginning of sobriety saying to the world, "I am an alcoholic." I feel like if I own this shame and this reality, I can start to do something about it and make some positive changes in my life.

Last March, I decided that I had been avoiding my "annual" long enough, and I made an appointment to go in for an exam. When I went to get weighed, I told the nurse, "I know I've gained weight, and I know how much. I haven't been in for a long time because I am ashamed of myself. Please don't say my weight out loud when you weigh me," and I closed my eyes when I stood on the scale.

She just looked at me funny and moved the weights and wrote down the number. I had my exam, and my GYN noted that it had been awhile since I had had a mammogram, and wrote me orders for one. I meant to go, but I never made the appointment, and since I wasn't in the habit of getting one annually, I just forgot about it.

Kyle had his prom and graduated from high school. I went to Florida with the girls and got Kyle set up in college...October rolled around and I saw pink crap everywhere and thought, "I need to get a mammogram," but I hate pink so much that I didn't do it in October just to prove a point. Nobody noticed, but I felt better. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas, and with the turn of the calendar year, I decided to make a change in my life.

I thought, "Someday, you will miss this very body you are ashamed of now. Someday, you will wish you looked this good." So I decided on a change of attitude. I decided to get my mammogram first then my annual then a complete physical. I was going to go to the dermatologist for a skin check and start to exercise a little and take my life and my body back.

So on January 6, 2015, I went to the diagnostic center for the mammogram. As I signed in, I thought to myself, "I wonder if today is the day that will change my life forever."

When the call came from my GYN the next day that there was a suspicious cluster of micro calcifications on my left breast and I needed to come in for a biopsy, I knew the answer was, "Yes."

The thing was, my regular GYN had retired since my checkup last year, although I didn't know it at the time. So I had this totally new person giving me advice on what to do. I was trying to listen and process what she was saying, but I only heard "5" and "micro calcifications" and "suspicious" and "biopsy." Immediately, I went to the computer---wrong thing to do---and googled those terms. It didn't matter that what came up said that 80% of calcifications are benign. That worst case scenario, it would be ductal carcinoma in situ. What I read was "cancer."

We left for New Orleans, and I began digging around my armpits and breast. I sat in the car the whole twelve hours trying to slyly feel a knot or bump. I didn't feel anything unusual, but my armpits began hurting, especially the left one where the calcifications were. I kept digging and digging and the panic began to rise. Did I feel something? I'd check both sides to look for symmetry. Yes? No? I couldn't tell. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I kept looking anyway. I would be walking around New Orleans thinking about this. Sometimes my mind would wander and I would be enjoying whatever it was we were doing, then I'd snap back and think, "cancer."

My friend, Amy, kept texting me, "Don't touch," and she reminded me that the more I touched, the more they would hurt and the more I would worry. I did my best to keep hands off, and it did help ease the pain some. I also stopped looking online for clues. That helped a little too. I stayed scared, though.

The biopsy was Friday morning. When I saw the mammogram hanging on the wall, the tech showed me where the calcifications were. I had one spot, not five like I thought, with five tiny calcifications in it. She reassured me that it was very, very tiny. It is also located in a part of my breast that has dense breast tissue. She said that is much better than having it in the fatty part. She said that dense tissue has more fibroadenomas than fatty parts, and often the calcifications are leftovers from when the fibroadenomas "die off."

During the procedure, I laid on my stomach on a bed, with my breast in a mammogram machine. They numbed my breast and inserted a hollow needle with a vacuum attachment. They sucked out the calcifications to send to pathology. Then a titanium clip was inserted into the spot to mark it for future reference. Then they cleaned me up and put skin glue on the spot. They took another set of mammograms of me to make sure they got what they needed. I got to see the mammogram of the tissue samples, and there were about 5 calcifications that were bigger and a few more that were much smaller. By "bigger" I mean the size of a piece of sand. They were very, very small.

I told the tech how scared I was and she said that it was probably nothing, but worst case scenario, if it was cancer, then it was very, very early and very, very small. It would be something that would be easily treatable with no negative consequences. I asked the radiologist to give me a percentage what he thought about it being cancer, and he said he couldn't say, obviously, but if he had to guess, he'd say maybe 30%.

I prayed. Kirk prayed. Kirk and I prayed together. But I thought surely other people more worthy than I have prayed this very same prayer. Why would God listen to me?

So all weekend, I laid around. I tried not to think of the possibilities. I felt nauseous. I was starving. I wanted chocolate, mashed potatoes, and cheese. I planned my funeral. I thought of all I had to do before I died. I cried about my kids. I saw signs everywhere I looked. I heard "cancer" on TV, the radio, at Kroger. I worried about insurance. I thought of our vacation plans getting cancelled. I wondered how Emily would get to play practice or who would help Claire pick a college or Kyle celebrate his love of living history?  I tried to stay off the computer, but I googled every possible combination of breast cancer, micro calcifications, and stereotactic biopsy that I could find. I went to the very darkest places even though I knew, I knew, I shouldn't. Amy said that if I worried and it was nothing, then I had worried for nothing. If I worried and it was something, then I had lived it twice. I couldn't help it. I was just. So. Scared.

I carried my phone around with me all day yesterday waiting for the call. It finally came at 4:30.

Benign.

I bawled my eyes out.

I have a new GYN. I have found a new general practitioner. I will remember the fear I felt these past two weeks and celebrate with gusto this life that I have. My imperfect body. My muffin top. My husband and children. My future.