And speaking of breast cancer....

(as I was yesterday)

My sister sent me the following video about breast cancer and health care folks featuring - woo! Our hometown. From Cuyuna Riverwood Breast Health Alliance:



This made me really nostalgic. I think the guy with the cows is my overall favorite.

CON-TRO-VER-SEEEEE

One of my friends linked to Think Before You Pink and this post on Voxygen.net and thus I felt bad and irresponsible and unthinking-sheepish about doing the breast cancer facebook update shit. Yeah, I KNOW that posting a facebook status saying blah-de-blah in order to "raise awareness" for [disease/cause/fashion travesty] does nothing physical and serves more to further mindless following of the herd, just like I know that if I send my personal and financial information to that nice widow who emailed me last month, my bank account will be tidily cleaned out. I think lots of people do know this.

So why do we do it? Does it really serve the single purpose of making us feel better regarding a situation (e.g. a relative with breast cancer) over which we have no power or control? Do we just continue on with our days after posting where we like to set our purse at night or our bra snap count, because now that we've done something, we can just forget all about that person or that disease? Are we mindless clickers? Easy marks? Fools? Does this just illustrate how we don't really care about a cause or a disease or anything until it touches us or our families or where we live? I know that I certainly didn't give a damn about Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's until my diagnosis. I'd never heard of it. I haven't seen an fb campaign for pants-shitting awareness, either. HEY.

Before You Buy Pink is also helpful. And here's another post from The Stir on silly breast cancer "awareness" products, and more thoughts related to this topic. I do agree with how annoying campaigns like "Save the Ta-tas" are; when someone close to me was diagnosed with breast cancer, my first thought was not for her goddamn tits. Blah, blah, I'm so humorless, whatever.

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Here's an unrelated link that made me boggle*:

Why is This GOP House Candidate Dressed as a Nazi?

Money quote from Iott:
"They have to take it in context. There's reenactors out there who do everything. You couldn't do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn't play the role of the Confederates.

_{*and also neatly divert from the topic of the fb/breast cancer brouhaha with a New! Angry! Item! Is there a sub-sub-subclause in Godwin's law for this?}

The Good, the Bad, and the Shitty

Why yes, I do regularly go through my movie collection and make poop puns out of the titles. It takes a lot of time and effort, which explains why I haven't posted since April.

In actuality, this year is turning out kind of shitty. My mom got diagnosed with breast cancer early in the year; my dad is still recovering from his cancer surgery from last year (so technically I suppose that doesn't count, since last year was in its own special category of Shit In A Bag); I still haven't landed a nearby librarian job, and there have been damn few available in a two-hour radius from our present city (our present city has nothing available either, awesomely enough); at my work, we found out that layoffs are probably imminent; I'm still living in Texas (cue any number of comments - ha, from all the Asian porn spammers who comment here, hahahah - telling me to GTFO if I don't like the Best State in the Union. Would that I could, guys, would that I could. Thanks for the tip, though!); and finally, I've been having one bizarre illness after the other.

Some good has come out of this Wallach-worthy pile: in May I got to go home and have a lengthy visit with my family. I still have a job, one that pays me an okay amount and health benefits for desk work. It's hard to knock that. A. and I moved to a new, nicer apartment in a quieter neighborhood. We have a teeny yard! And an upstairs! A real home at last! I also found a primary care doctor who is hilarious, and knows my gastro personally - what a happy coincidence. And finally, A. and I got an amazing mutt from the local animal shelter.

So there is some Clint mixed in with the Eli. I can take that.

Everyone knows Eli's the best, anyway.

Most of these things I can't control. So I'll pick on the least important and most personal one, since the others are hard to discuss.

Texas! My personal feelings aside, it's been interesting so far living here. I'm a northern girl by nature, and my blood likes the cold. I like the feel of sharp, freezing wind against my face, I like wearing windbreakers and hoodies and scarves in the fall, I like bundling into a heavy wool coat and boots in the winter, and I love breaking out the rain boots for the spring. (I also like seasons. Go figure.) I don't know whether my northern heritage makes me more susceptible to certain bacteria or viruses down here; it's possible. More possible, I think, is that the winter up north knocks out a lot of stuff, whereas down here it thrives.

FOR EXAMPLE.

After I visited my folks at the end of May, I flew back to TX with A. and we began packing up to move. We took a load of stuff over to the new place, and then returned to the old crappy apartment to make dinner and watch Larry David die and go to heaven.

"Wow," I said as I chopped up veggies for burritos. (Note: I was chopping a lot of stuff. There was a lot of knife slicing and cutting and banging going on.) "It's really hot in here. I should have a beer."

"Or some water," A. suggested.

So I had water and a beer, and by the time I finished the beer I had to kneel down on the kitchen floor because my legs were very, very shaky.

"Maybe I have to go to the bathroom!" I said.

A. suggested that, instead, we take my temperature. I had a fever of 101. So I drank a lot of fluids, went to urgent care and got misdiagnosed with Random Viral Syndrome (also known as doctor slang for "ha ha, just fucking with you!", drank more fluids, dreamed that I was burning in hell for all the bad things I've done, realized that there was a giant spreading purplish-red mark on the back of my leg, went back to urgent care with a temp of 103, and got properly diagnosed with cellulitis.

Cellu-fricking-litis. Which I have never heard of outside of hospitals (aka infections for those who are around sick people all the time, aka a breeding ground for germs germs germs), and the urgent care Doc no. 2 assured me, "Oh no, it's all over the place down here. People get it in locker rooms, public showers, places like that." (Aaaand overnight I turned into Bob Wiley.) They shot me full of antibiotics and gave me sulfa drugs and a tube of medicinal cream and I got better after about a week.

Then last week, I found little dry-patchy sores under my arms. Slowly, they've spread to my belly, my back, and my legs. So I went to see Hilarious Primary Care Physician, who said, "It's a fungal infection!" and gave me a scripp for another cream. The cream is turning the patchy spots white and crusty, which I hope is evidence of their little fungus-y death throes as they rot, rot, rot. Die, fungal parasites!

Naturally, all these little illnesses are stellar for A.'s and my marital relations. Luckily, he doesn't read this blog, so he isn't subjected to my descriptions of them, just the actual physical proof. In sickness and in health, baby! MAHAHAHAHAHAHA

When you look at the rash of horrible ulcerative colitis-related illnesses like skin lesions/sores and liver trouble and more, these don't stack up. They're annoyances, momentary mosquitos. I shouldn't be such a crabass, because there are people who are a lot worse off than I am. Nor should I blame it all on Texas or warm climate in general. But then I wouldn't have any fun at all.



Up next: comfort foods for the colon-challenged. What to eat when you feel like shit, and you can't eat shit (aka junk food, jerks) because you'll shit yourself to death. Coming soon! And by soon, I mean sooner than three months from now. Sheesh.


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In other news:

Local PBS is doing a best of the Met thing, and damn if the bullfighter guy from Carmen (it's the knife fight scene!*) isn't hot hot hot.





*Opera knife fighting is really freaking funny. Whoa, the lady singing Carmen is also quite a babe.

Posting from Hiatusland

Folic Acid Supplements Don't Reduce High-Risk Colon Cancers.

This is an interesting article. My gastro has me taking a milligram of folic acid daily, just on the "off-chance" that I get knocked up. What are the complications of folic acid and ulcerative colitis, if any? (He blithely informed me when I asked, "None. Absolutely none.") If ulcerative colitis primes someone for a higher rate of cancer possibility, would folic acid up those numbers?

Is folic acid the new formula, wheat bran, omega-three?

Am I taking valuable library science time to type crap? Well, YEAH.