Posts Tagged ‘cancer’

I just turned 40, which, once I got over that “Omg, another decade gone” thing wasn’t so bad, except that I was immediately sent off for various tests because now I am officially in a new age category.

This one:

First up on the list was the mammogram, especially important since there’s some family history there. A bit apprehensive, I went off to my early morning appointment, and was faced with this as I stripped down:




Text:

You can't fake authentic surrender for it is the moment you unclench your hands…accept what IS and finally let go…that the fertile space is provided for divine intervention and unimaginable possibilities.

I stared, horrified, before whipping out the camera before they made me whip out…ah hem.

Let’s examine the ways in which this is just creepy. First there’s the text, which seems to be saying “okay, yeah, you might have breast cancer, but there’s nothing you can do about it anyway. Oh, but if you’re not cranky about it, maybe God will do something for you.” Also, the use of “fertile space” in this context is more than passing strange. As are the random ellipses. Not to mention that the text seems to be written in blood on a tombstone.

As nervous as I was about the exam, fear of preachy zombie hands reaching through the Aurora Borealis to squeeze my chest never entered into it, although it does occur to me that if this is some kind of a Rorschach test, I’ve definitely failed.

Charlie’s ferret Nora was quite the trooper. She was 9 (average ferret lifespan is 5-7 yrs), had cancer and diabetes for the last year, and generally she just kept on truckin’.

In 2003, in the midst of renovations, our neighbor announced “Yo weasel escape!” Sure enough, she’d scurried under some contractor to go explore the big wide world. After a week outside coping with cats, rats bigger than her, and God knows what else, she decided she was ready to be pampered again and came on home.

That Christmas Alison rescued a litter of tiny kittens whose mother had gotten killed. Nora was fascinated by them, but her idea was playing was to jump on the kittens’ neck and shake. Fun ferret play, but early on the cats developed a healthy respect and kept an eye on her.

Those kittens are now the size of moose, but they still trembled and fled when Nora got playful.

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Charlie’s in NY, and on Sunday she started getting really sluggish and un-Noralike. I took her in Monday morning, and they determined that her kidneys failed. They stabilized her, but she slipped away yesterday afternoon.

She was a huge presence in a tiny package and will be sorely missed.

(I have had a talk with the rest of the animals to tell them that I have had about ENOUGH of this and there is to be no more illness for a minimum of a year. That’s it. A moratorium has been called and there are to be no exceptions.)