cindy's world

Trainee: I wish my computer would just shut down so I can go home.
Me: kick it.
Trainee: I have done nothing but answer emails since I came back from lunch. I’m about to kick Prince up and party Like it’s 1999. As a matter of fact one of my friends just used the country-est saying I’ve heard in a long time. He said that the person he was talking to need to stop griping before he told her how the cow ate the cabbage. I was in here cracking up.
Me: I have never heard that. What does that mean?
Trainee: Don’t react before you know what happened. I never heard that one either, but out of all the country ones I heard this was just straight back woods country.
Me: I wonder where statements like that come from. Like 200 years ago, did this happen? :
Farmer: OH MY GAWD!! The COW’s in the cabbage! And it ate it all up! YOU’RE supposed to be watching Bessie, the cow! I’m gonna kill you!
Wife: No wait! You don’t understand! Stop griping before I tell you HOW the cow ate the cabbage!
Farmer: All right, fine. HOW did the cow eat the cabbage?
Wife: One bite at a time.
Farmer: I’M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS! *kick kick kick kick*
Trainee: if anybody else read these emails they would swear our lunch was liquid.

I got this via secure medical-site email today. I believe this would mean it’s the 3rd worst-case-scenario. *cry*:

Received:
10/19/07 9:26 AM

Hi, I have the results of your cervical biopsies. Remember we did this to check to see why your pap smear was abnormal.

We found what we expected, PRE cancerous changes, NOT cancer. Remember, this is preventive medicine.
We should treat this (we have plenty of time) to prevent cervical cancer developing in the future.

The treatment I recommend for you is a LEEP procedure.
To schedule an appointment for yourself I would like you to call our pap smear coordinating nurse, [KB] at [#].

Here is some information on LEEP.

Dr [K]

What is a LEEP procedure?
It stands for Loop Electrical Excision Procedure. An electric ‘knife’ (loop) is passed through the cervix to remove a scoop of the cervix (as an ice cream scoop removes a scoop from the carton). The area that likely contains the abnormal cells is removed and examined microscopically for:
1- to ensure the changes are just pre cancerous and not cancer
2- to ensure that all the diseased areas are removed (we have to make a guess as to how deep to go – we can’t see it)

I do a LEEP with an anesthetic, just like the dentist uses so the LEEP doesn’t hurt. There are rare risks of bleeding and even rarer risks of infection.
After a LEEP there can be no sex or any vaginal insertion for 4 weeks – we need to allow healing.

What are the risks of a LEEP procedure?
1- Excessive bleeding – very rare. I need to know if you have a bleeding disorder (hemophilia)
2- Infection – Very rare
3- What about pregnancy after a LEEP? The majority of women who have had a LEEP have no complications with future pregnancy. However there is a small increased chance of a premature birth after a LEEP. There seems to be this same increased chance no matter what type of treatment is used for dysplasia.

What are the risks of doing nothing?
The pre cancerous changes could worsen over time and eventually turn into cancer.

The guy on the radio this morning was making fun of how women always say we want a man with “personality” and “a sense of humor,” but when we really find a guy with that, the hot ones don’t laugh at his jokes (probably cuz they don’t get it) and too many hot celebrity girls have humped Josh Hartnett lately that the radio guy would have more respect for women if we were just truthful in saying personality comes waaaay secondary to a nice ass, or something like that.

But he’s right…what tops our cliche list are honesty, sense of humor, good personality. Which makes me wonder — what tops the guys’ cliche list for what they want in girls? I don’t think I ever knew. We tease men and say, rolling our eyes, that they just care about boobs and ass, but what do the MEN say they want?

You know how I have a certain admiration for Dove Chocolate wrapper fortunes? (See past Dove advice here.)

Today, it says this:
“There’s a time for compromise…it’s called ‘later’.”

What the heck is that?! I thought Dove Promises (R) Messages were supposed to be romantic and conducive to love and relationships. If they printed more than ONE of these, and everyone followed that advice, then we’d have a lot more cases to handle at work. Yuck.

*throwing wrapper in trash*

I was thinking as I was driving into work this morning, that I’d like to try on a different look and see how that affects strangers’ perceptions of me. I’m not talking about parting my hair differently, I’m talking about stepping into a whole different social persona.

I think society recognizes someone’s social identity based on whether someone’s attire fits into a known stereotype. Not to say that you know everything about a person by appearance alone, but you can probably guess certain common traits within the stereotype. Like if I were in leather pants, white wifebeater, big leather jacket, chains, short punkish hair, tattoos, people would say, “Oh, okay, biker chick.” Warm-up pants, tennis shoes, fitted sports top, pony tail, then it’s “She’s athletic.” I certainly do get greeted differently if I walked into a store after work in my suit — namely, I get a lot more “ma’am”s. =P I think that’s why Halloween is such a big deal with women. We get to depart from the “norm” identity and be entirely appearance-mobile, with a great excuse. “Oh, I’m not NORMALLY a slut/naughty nurse/whorish nun/tomato, it’s just my HALLOWEEN costume.” Hmm. Wonder what it says about me that I’ve been wanting to be an anime character for 2-3 Halloweens now but never got the chance.

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I think people are only truly comfortable wearing only a small section of the many possibilities in the attire spectrum, so I wanna step out one day in, like, leather shorts and a low-cut fitted top with a cabbie cap worn sideways, with big hoop earrings, dark lipstick and eye makeup and vixen nail polish, and see how people treat me differently. Or, I guess there are new looks out there these days that the teens are doing? Like “Emo,” which is like our Goth mixed with some punk, and “Scene,” which is like Goth mixed with Cyndi-Lauper-80s attire. Ooh. Maybe I’ll go Goth for a day. Or maybe I’ll be something you guys suggest.

Any suggestions?

Let’s see…it’s half past noon and I’m here online instead of at the gym. What’s going on?

My gym trainee stopped by before lunch and told me that after a late nite out, she’s too tired to go to the gym today, so she’ll sit this one out. While parking at the gym, I noticed that Mr. W’s car isn’t at its usual spot in the parking lot, which means that he’s not there, either. Motivation is so low at this point that when I saw that the one thing missing from my gymming outfit is a sportsbra, I justified that I can’t work out in my current bra, it’s too unsupportive, and I don’t want to wear a sweaty wet bra back to work, and celebrated internally and left the gym. On my way out I saw Mr. W’s car, he must’ve gotten there late. Oh well. Whatevers. That’s 2 days in a row of skipping (worked thru lunch yesterday individually copying and collating 780 pages of jury instructions), but I’m sleepy and tired.

Besides, I’m self-conscious about my Boot Camp scar/scabs now and don’t wanna be in shorts. “She HAD nice legs,” Mr. W said the other day. And days later, he remarked that the two thick lines of injury are gonna be “pink forever now” when the scabs fall off.
“YOU’RE pink,” I pointed out defensively.
“Yeah, but I’m pink all over. You’re just gonna be pink THERE,” he said. Ptth.

A Mother passing by her son’s bedroom was astonished to see that his bed was nicely made and everything was picked up.

Then she saw an envelope, propped up prominently on the pillow that was addressed to “Mom.” With the worst premonition she opened the envelope with trembling hands and read the letter.

Dear Mom,

Call me when it’s safe to come home.

This is a post for the fellas, cuz I understand most men don’t want to read about my colposcopy today.

Sunday, Vanessa and I joined my coworker and 14 of her friends for a private burlesque lesson. The first thing the studio did was have us randomly and blindly draw “stripper names” prewritten on nametags, which we wore on ourselves as our alter ego for the hour. Vanessa was “Coco Whispers” and I was “Vixxxen Blue.” Is it just me or does my stripper self sound like she does porn?

The dance was very cute, complete with body rolls, hip rolls, lots of butts stuck in the air, and of course, the omnipresent furry boa.

Since the class cost us $20 apiece, I made sure to write down the choreography as soon as I got home. And being the dork, I went through the moves in my head while I was doing cardio at the gym yesterday after my colposcopy. Maybe that should be our “Blogger Girls’ Dance” that Flat Coke & Flies, Vanessa, Jordan and I have been talking about forever! Hmmm…

You can read Vanessa’s account of the class here.

It actually wasn’t that bad. I was so nervous I think I was kinda shaky in the stirrups. The doctor was great. He came in the room like a big ball of sunshine and explained right away that this is preventative care (like I’d been telling myself), that “we’re not looking for cancer, we’re trying to figure out how to keep this woman from getting cancer in the distant future.” He viewed my innards with his microscope and said, “I can already see right now that this is not anything remotely serious.” Whew! His nurse and I chatted away while the doctor was examining, and it was more nervous chatter on my end and I explained that my brain does this self-sabotaging thing imagining something as way more horrid than it actually is. The doctor said that’s absolutely common and normal and asked if I’d like an anesthetic spray on the spot he’s going to biopsy. Despite the fact that I’d swallowed 3 extra-strength Tylenols half an hour before the procedure (I was advised to by the nurse on the phone) when I normally would have to be writhing and foaming at the mouth on the floor from pain for me to take any over-the-counter medication, I agreed to the spray. “It’s the same stuff the dentist puts on your gums before he gives you the shot,” the doctor said as he sprayed, and told me to expect a little fizzle and maybe a little stinging sensation. I felt nothing. We chatted as he gave the stuff a minute to work, and then went in for the biopsy. “You’re going to feel a little pinch at the most,” he said. I cringed. “Here comes the pinch,” he warned as I felt a little “clip” motion and heard the click. No pinch. He looked up at me. “Or not,” he said. “Here comes another one.” CLICK!
“Nothing!” I said in delight.
I told the doctor and the nurse about Flat Coke’s recent colposcopy where the inept nurse stupidly put both her biopsies in the same cup, making Flat Coke fear she’d have to re-suffer another biopsy to make up for the nurse’s idiocy. My doctor’s nurse lifted up two little purple-lidded containers and I got to see little pink flaps dance in the swirling liquid. “Two cups,” she told me and we laughed.
The doctor stayed behind and answered my questions, and then told me that he doesn’t think I have anything to worry about. He said he’d get the lab results to me in about a week and he’ll tell me one of three things: 1) it’s nothing and should clear itself up, we’ll just schedule for a regular pap smear in 6 months; 2) it’s something non-cancerous but we’ll just keep an eye on it to make sure it clears up, so come back for a pap smear in 6 months; or on the very unlikely small off-chance, 3) it’s pre-cancerous and we want to remove it so come back and we’ll do a procedure that’ll be even less painful than the one you just endured today.
Again, whew!
When I got home, I called my mom like she asked and it turned out that while I was at my appointment, she’d already called my (turned-off) cell phone multiple times in a panic and called my house and was disturbed at the lack of answer, and was about to email me at work, wanting to know how the procedure went.
Oh, and I never really got cramping from it. Just some bleeding (which the doctor told me to expect for 2-3 days, which is incidentally the same amount of time he told me to refrain from sex). I even hit the gym with Mr. W after the procedure.

…for colposcopies, I guess. I’ve never been one to follow trends, tho. *sigh* Mr. W took the day off to come with me in case I’m doubled-over in cramping and blood and can’t drive. The weather is appropriately overcast and rainy. Maybe upon our return it’ll be ripe for candles, hot chocolate and “Buffy.” Wish me luck. Here I go…