Prostate Lecture, fun huh?

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As I have gotten older I have become an amateur expert on illnesses I have had or people I love have had. I could tell you all about Atrial Septal Defect, a heart disorder that is congenital that is usually found days after a baby is born but mine wasn’t found until I was 36 years old. It is unfathomable to me that all those doctors over all those years missed it. The one who found it was pissed off at all the others. She was a feisty bitch and I didn’t like her, but bless her heart, (no pun intended) she found it. I had it fixed. Not easy. Open heart surgery.  A lot of pain. A lot of drugs. A lot of scars. I could have dropped dead and I didn’t. I’m grateful to the feisty bitch.

Now, someone I care a lot about is having a prostate cancer recurrence. This man asked his primary care physician if he could get him in for a physical at the end of 2013. Of course, every one in the world is trying to get in for their physical while their deductible is satisfied at the end of the year. This man’s physician said no, he couldn’t squeeze him in. My friend said, “Can we at least do blood work?” This request saved my friends life.

You guys, prostate cancer is the number one cancer for men and one in six men will be diagnosed with it sometime in their lifetime. There are no symptoms in the first 2 to 3 stages of the disease and by the 4rth stage you might be toast. Yes, I’m trying to scare you. Like any other cancer the trick is to catch it early. Stage one prostate cancer is relatively easy to treat and has a huge success rate. Stage two, a little trickier but still very treatable with a radical prostatectomy. (Surgical removal of the prostate or other options depending on your situation). Stage three means cancer cells have gone beyond the initial site, maybe into lymph nodes, etc. and that gets into really serious cancer treatment which has serious quality of life implications.  Stage 4 I don’t even want to talk about.

The reason I’m writing this, is that there is this new idea circulating around that maybe a yearly PSA test is not that important. There are organizations that say it leads to false positives and unnecessary biopsies.   If my friend did not get a PSA test in 2013 it could easily be over by now, if you know what I mean. A PSA test will tell you if your PSA is elevated and if you might have cancer! It’s an easy and cheap test! A little blood test!

Men, I warn you, do not assume when your doctor says your blood work was fine that she /he tested you for PSA. You must know what your PSA is, guys!  I have men friends who say their doctors do the blood work but don’t include PSA! WHAT? It’s the number one cancer of men! Why would that not be obviously in every blood work up! I just don’t get it.  But it’s true.  Take control of your health by being positive your doctor is checking PSA.   Have I made my point? One in six! Get your PSA test no matter what anyone says!

Whew, I’m exhausted…..

They Are Wild!

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Shauna in His Pool
A keeper at a Florida zoo who was the senior “big cat” keeper and was known as the “cat whisperer” was mauled and killed by her favorite tiger a day or two ago.  This happens way too often.  She was in the friggin’ cage with him.  Wrong!
There are zoos that are “protected contact” and then zoos that are not.  Protected contact means that you only interact with a potentially “killer” animal through some kind of protection.  For example, at the Dallas zoo, the keepers are very intimate with the gorillas and chimps but always through heavy mesh fencing.  Because of that, there is no way the keepers could be harmed by the animals.  The Dallas zoo also adheres to protected contact with lions, tigers, mountain lions, etc.  We are a protected contact zoo.
Gorillas are not “killers,” they are very gentle by nature, but because of their size and strength they could crush a keeper with an affectionate hug.  Chimps on the other hand can be very aggressive and as cute as they can be, especially the babies, they are very dangerous. I am a huge believer in protected contact because our keepers at the Dallas zoo don’t get killed and never have and keepers at non-protected contact zoos have.
I get it.  I know what happens.  Keepers in non-protective become somehow immune to the fact that the animals they love and the animals they believe love them are wild animals.  They begin to believe that their bond with the animals is something very special and different.  They think the animals love them.  And they might be right!  But they are WILD!  They turn on a dime.
I think keepers who love their  animals might lose sight of this.  These animals hear or see something out of the corner of their eye and they attack whatever is in front of them.  I’ve seen chimps do this.  Thats what happened in the recent killing of the keeper.  Everything was fine until she turned her head and the tiger heard or saw something that was upsetting and attacked the first thing she saw, and someone she probably otherwise loved.
All I can say is “Siegfried and Roy.”

Pearls of Wisdom

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This is my first post from long ago writings by me.   It made me chuckle when I re-visited these writings from roughly 1983 when I was in my mid 20’s that I had the audacity to call them Pearls of Wisdom.

It was hard for me to record these exactly as they were written 30 some odd years ago, I so wanted to update and edit.  But, for authenticity, I didn’t.  Here, from a 20 something year old are some guidelines for life….

–Being attached to outcomes distorts your perception of what’s happening.  You tend to ignore your intuition or gut feelings because you are absorbed with wishful thinking.  You can have a preference in the outcome but you must be able to clearly see what is happening in the present time to be able to create an action plan to get to where you want to be.

–If you wait to see what is expected of you before you perform, the level of expected performance is set by something or someone outside yourself and vey well may be lower than your own.  If you go for it and don’t put limits on yourself, no one else will either.

–The more you use your brain the better it works and the more creative it becomes,  it is resonating at a higher level and “tunes in” to higher creativity.

–You can’t be happy in a relationship until your happy with yourself.  Two halve’s don’t make a whole; it makes for a fragmented relationship with unrealistic exceptions resulting in resent.  If you are hoping for self confidence as a result of a relationship, your process will be mirrored for you and you will attract into your orbit someone who is hoping to get self confidence from you.  Self confidence is not given and recieved.  It’s way more personal than that.  (Seems a little dramatic now but when I wrote this I capitalized this next part which I will do here in honor of that young girl.)

SELF CONFIDENCE IS CREATED WITHIN YOURSELF BY A PROCESS OF TRYING/STUMBLING/FALLING/MAKING CORRECTIONS/TRYING AGAIN/AND FINALLY SUCCEEDING IN ENDEAVORS LARGE AND SMALL AND ASSERTING  WHO YOU ARE AND COMING TO BAT FOR YOUR PERSONAL BOUNDRIES ALONG THEY WAY.

–I have never seen anything healthy come as a result of an outburst of anger.  It usually only causes pain, fear and confusion.   For the person who is supposedly expressing themselves, it leads to feelings of being out of control and wounded self esteem.

–The older you get, you more you look like who you are.  So people who like themselves have an easier time aging.

–Creativity lies where there are no facades.

–We are not going to enjoy the “more” we get later if we’re not enjoying  what we have now.  Happiness comes from within, not from stuff.

— Work HARD!!

 

 

 

 

Let Them Die

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Seventeen elephants who would have starved to death in Swaziland, Africa have been rescued and sent to three zoos. Five for Dallas, six for Sedgwick County zoo in Kansas and six for Omaha zoo.  Unless it’s an extreme circumstance, which this was, it’s illegal to take animals out of the wild and put them into captivity.  This has taken the three zoos 2 years to pull off and they’ve had fights and lawsuits with animal activist organizations because they wanted it to stay “natural”. (Translation: let them die…..no kidding.)  All zoo employees and volunteers have been prepped and coached for the likely event of demonstrations or even riots.  So far nothing, which is surprising.  Our elephants arrived Friday night after a long and arduous journey then ate heartily and drank lots of water (horrible drought in Africa) and slept well.  They are in quarantine for at least a month but the five are together.  Our existing elephants were stomping their feet and trumpeting because they could smell or sense new elephants.  The “introductions” of our four elephants with the five new ones will take months with lots of careful observation and consideration from their keepers.  Animal personalities and hierarchies matter a LOT, and you can’t force anything.

At the volunteer meeting on Saturday, our CEO, who’d had five hours of sleep in the previous five days because of some “big grey things” spoke and presented a slide show.  He said he was very nervous about the transport of these gigantic animals and wanted to stay in touch with staff accompanying the elephants on their journey.  He was tripping over his words and getting choked up.  He was so relieved that the elephants had successfully been transported and arrived safely at our zoo.  Our CEO said one male ate all his food, drank all his water and was asleep before some of the females even had the nerve to leave the crates they had been in on the plane.

The photographs he shared on a slide show were unnerving.  We have an elephant named Jenny and she is 10,000 pounds.  That’s five tons, am I right?  Imagine 17 elephants being loaded into (very comfortable and elephant friendly) crates, lifted with a crane and somehow moved into a 747 aircraft.  Imagine being the pilot of that plane taking off with that kind of weight.  Let’s be conservative here in this calculation.  Let’s say each elephant weighed a mere 6,000 pounds….that would be 102,000 pounds!  I can’t, for the life of me figure out how a plane takes off at all, much less with that kind of weight!

I’m thrilled to say the Dallas zoo now has 9 gorgeous African Elephants!

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Our Four Girls Who Will Soon be Nine!

Love and Pain

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I’ve been having trouble with my left shoulder and the pain got pretty bad. I’ve recently switched from tennis to pickle ball and in tennis I had a two handed back hand so naturally I continued to use that technique in pickle ball. The problem is the motion of a two handed back hand in pickle ball is much “tighter” than it is in tennis and it resulted in injury. I knew that is where the problem originated and I quickly learned a mean single-handed back hand but my shoulder still hurt and it has been hurting for a long time.

Finally, I went to a lovely Korean muscular therapist who explained that shoulders are very complex and injuries take a long time to heal. Her work was helping and she told me I should also consider doing acupuncture in addition to the work we were doing. So, I found a lovely Chinese woman with a PhD in Chinese medicine and acupuncture and saw her for the first time last week. It seemed to help a little so I went back today. Today seemed to help a LOT which is nice.

After my treatment as we were sitting at Julie’s desk scheduling my next appointment, I noticed a picture of her with a gorgeous golden retriever.

“Oh my god, your dog is beautiful!” I said.

“She was beautiful,” Julie replied, “and I adored her. I never had children so she was like my child.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“She got cancer, we tried everything, but we finally had to put her down,” she said as her eyes got red and watery.

“That is horrible,” I said, “I never had kids either and as an adult I have had to live through the death of three beloved dogs. Two of them golden’s.”

“Oh, that’s awful,” Julie said.

She went on to describe the day she knew it was time to put Scarlett down. She talked about the vet coming to her house so Scarlett didn’t think they were going in the car to go to the park. She described how she got Scarlett up on her lap in a big bear hug and then allowed the vet to give her the shot. She described what it felt like to have Scarlett die in her arms. She said it was very peaceful but she and I were both sobbing. She grabbed a box of Kleenex….

“I’m so sorry to make you cry,” she said softly.

“It’s okay,” I said, “crying is okay.”

They say one of the most gut wrenching things in life is when a parent has to bury a child. The problem with being a dog parent is that you have to bury most of them.

Bubbles

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The other night my husband Steve was stressed and achy so I drew him a bath. I lovingly put in Epsom salt for the aches and a nice smelling bubble bath product for the scent and the bubbles. Bubbles when you are in the bath over age 50 are a really nice idea. His bath was ready and he got in. I hung around in the bathroom with him. We’ve only lived in this house about 8 months and we haven’t taken a lot of baths.

“This bath has a Jacuzzi function, did you know that?” Steve asked me.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Have you ever used it?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “I don’t like chaos and Jacuzzi’s seem chaotic to me.”

“I’d like to try it,” he said.

“Okay,” I replied, “Let’s see if we can figure this out.”

Steve laid his head back while I fiddled around with the controls on the touch screen. Nothing was happening and then suddenly the jets sputtered and sprung into action. And I mean action. The bathwater and bubbles suddenly looked like a gigantic vat of boiling water on steroids.

Then the bubbles began to grow.

And grow.

“Before we knew it, bubbles were rising up from his waist to his chest and then threatening to envelope his face.

“How do you turn this damn thing off!” he shouted over the rising bubbles and the noise from the jets.

“I don’t know!” I yelled back as I was bailing bubbles with my arms and throwing them into the shower.  I had to keep bailing bubbles because they had begun to spill over onto the floor while I had visions of them filling up the entire bathroom.  This was a race against time.

“Try anything and everything!” I yelled, “Before those bubbles cover your face!”  I frantically kept bailing bubbles into the shower.

It seemed like and eternity but he finally did something that worked and the jets stopped. We stood there staring at each other. Bubbles everywhere! In his eyebrows, his hair, my arms and everywhere else.

“Relaxing bath, honey?” I asked. We burst into hysterics. “Steve, I’m going to go get my phone! I need a picture of this for my blog.”

“No, you’re not,” he replied.

Sorry, no photo!

Loose Screws in Texas

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“Bounce it! Bounce it!” a person named Susan was shouting at me from the other side of the net.

“I know the rules, Susan!!” my voice was raised as I whacked the ball as hard as I could back over the net aiming for her head.

I missed her head and the ball flew out of bounds (It surely would have been a home run had I been playing baseball) and I lost the point. I am normally not at all mean spirited but this woman was obnoxious and had been adamantly bossing us all around.

“Susan,” our coach Dave said gently, “if this had been tournament play you would have lost that point for shouting over the net to your opponent!” Susan glared at him menacingly and if looks could kill, coach would be dead.

I have recently taken up Pickle Ball. I wish it were called something else because that doesn’t sound very fierce but it is a fast paced game and a cross between badminton and tennis. The court is one-third the size of a tennis court and much of the game is played volleying at the net. It’s the fastest growing sport in the country because the baby boomers are aging (me) and it’s not as hard on the body as tennis but just as much fun. I am happy to say I am a very good pickle ball player as the skills I acquired playing 15 years of tennis were directly transferable to the sport. It is a very convenient sport if you are the victim of the dreaded Dallas weather of severe ice storms, extreme winds, torrential rain, oppressive humidity and outrageous heat because it is played indoors in a gym.

Dave is a youthful 71 years old, is very outgoing and gregarious, has a charming South African accent and an irrepressible sense of humor. I have so much fun with him. I also have a great time with the other women in our group.

“Dave!” Susan shouted, “You have to quit calling the score! Whoever is serving should call the score! It’s incorrect in Pickle Ball for one person to call the score, Dave!” Scoring in Pickle Ball is very confusing and is the only thing I didn’t pick up immediately and am still struggling with.

“I want him to call the score, Susan!” I loudly interjected, “I’m still learning the scoring!” Mitra backed me up by forcefully saying she also wanted him to call score.

Things were getting really weird and Dave made an attempt to lighten things up and with a delightful smile on his face he said, “Susan, quit bossing me around. You are not my wife,” as he walked away to get some water.

“Thank god I am not your wife. I wake up every morning and thank god I am not your wife!!” Susan viciously asserted.

It was so bizarre and I was realizing this woman has a real screw loose and I couldn’t help laughing as Dave approached me. “Did you hear what she just said?” I said.

“What?” he said. I repeated her comment.

“Do you think she knows the feeling is mutual?” Dave laughed.

As we said our goodbyes and see you next week Susan said she would not be there next week. It was all the rest of us could do not to break into applause.

Provocative Neighbors

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“I still need to know what you do about Termites,” I called out to Joanne as I approached she and Peter on her driveway. Joanne is my next door neighbor and Peter does the landscape maintenance for both our houses.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “I’m not really sure what my guy does but he’s coming a week from tomorrow so I’ll have him knock on your door.”

“Well, wait, what company is it? I’ve already interviewed three and there are things I don’t like about all three of them,” I said as I noticed that Joanne’s dress was completely see through and I could see the silhouettes of her thighs all the way up to her crotch.

“It’s called BugsAway. They’re great! Family owned, very nice people, Christian, they’re great.”

I laughed and I could tell by the look on her face my laughter needed some explaining. “I’m not from Texas or anywhere in the Bible Belt so I’m not used to hearing Christian as a selling point,” I said.

Peter chuckled.

“Trustworthy!” she blurted, “I meant trustworthy by that.”

“Well, I was raised a Catholic and they were molesting alter boys, so I’m not sure you can always equate the two,” I said. Peter laughed out loud. “In fact,” I went on, “if someone held a gun to my head and said I had to align with an organized religion, it would probably be Buddhism. But wait! I hardly know you guys! I’m not supposed to be talking about politics, sex or religion!” Peter threw his head back laughing.

“Where are you going!?” I then demanded of Joanne.

“To her mailbox,” Peter said. I think he knew what I was getting at.

“I just got back from swimming,” Joanne said.

“Oh, it’s a bathing suit cover! I was gonna say your dress is completely see through and was going to offer to lend you a slip!”

Peter was laughing so hard he had to walk away.

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Sucking

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Angel came out to the waiting room and in her normal manner said loudly “Thompson!”

I jumped up and went to her as she said, “Hi, how are you?” I always think that’s a weird question because if you are at the doctor, you are probably not doing so great. I hope people don’t just say fine instead of my back is killing me or I have chest pain or my head feels like it’s about to explode or my blood pressure is off the charts. But, I bet a lot of people do say fine just prior to being escorted into the little examination room where Angel finds out the truth. I can’t remember what I said to her in response but I don’t think it was fine. 

I know you guys read my blog with bated breath and I know what you are thinking. What?!? She’s at the doctor again? Another surgery for this Accidental Texan? This is becoming too much!! Nope, no more surgery, I was there for my annual well woman exam but also because my blood pressure had been sky high.  I have “White Coat Syndrome” which means when I’m in a medical setting my blood pressure is super high. Since I don’t want to give Angel high blood pressure when she sees my blood pressure reading, I take it at home for several days before my appointment, record the great results on a little index card and give it to her to calm her nerves. (Just kidding, Angel is NOT a nervous type, she’s super competent, very grounded and has probably seen way worse than my reading today, I hope.)

However, this week I could NOT get a decent blood pressure reading in the days prior to my appointment. Every time I took a reading I was shocked at how high it was. I didn’t write anything on my little index card.

“So Andrea,” Dr. Christy asked after several other questions inquiring about my high blood pressure, “What about your salt intake?”

“Wait!” I said. “Dr. Christy, does a gigantic salt intake affect your blood pressure immediately, or does it happen over time?”

“No, a gigantic intake affects it immediately.”

“Oh my god,” I said, “You are not going to believe this.”

“What?!” she exclaimed eagerly, fingers ready on her keyboard.

“Steve just came back from some city famous for peanuts or maybe it was a stadium famous for them and he brought a gigantic bag of salted peanuts in the shell home. I don’t eat peanuts often because they are so fattening but I love salted peanuts in the shell and here is my dark, dirty secret. I suck them before I crack them open and eat them. And I mean I suck them until there is no salt left in them, then I crack the shell and eat the insides and I’ve been eating like 30 every day for the last week!”

Dr. Christy laughed out loud as she typed. “You are too funny,” she said. “And yes, that would raise your blood pressure!”

I don’t have many friends in Texas because I have lived here a short time and I’ve been preoccupied with medical issues. From the day I met her, I wanted to be friends with Dr. Christy. I didn’t feel I could be the one to initiate a social get together with her since doctors sometimes have rules for themselves about becoming friends with patients. I get that. If a friendship were to arise, the initiation would have to come from her and today it did. She said she wanted to get together in a social situation and do something fun. YAY!

As I was getting ready to leave Dr. Christy said, “Andrea, quit sucking on salted peanuts in the shell. Find something else to suck that doesn’t have so much sodium. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

Degradation and Intimidation

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Shortly after Ryan arrived, a termite specialist named Garrett came to give me an estimate on installing a termite control system that I have heard is important here in Texas. Heck, in Scottsdale, all I had to worry about were scorpions and rattlesnakes, my comfort zone. Termites in Texas?!? Eeeeew!

We just moved into a new house and there have been a lot of service people coming and going working on various things. Ryan is an AV/electronics guy and was working quietly in the house for hours. He is smart, gregarious and adorable, probably 28 or 29 years old. He was working in the great room, which is the main room in the house and was privy to my conversations with at least two other service people that day.

I’ve owned a lot of houses in my life. Houses I’ve lived in and houses I’ve rented out and I have a lot of experience dealing with these service guys. I am good at it now but only because I’ve attended the school of very hard knocks for so many years. The first thing Garrett did was pull out a color brochure with diagrams and schematics of all the insidious and horrible things termites can do.

“I don’t want to see that,” I said.

“Uh, what? You don’t?” he said.

“No, I don’t.” I said. “It feels like you are trying to scare me. If a house can be built, anything that goes wrong with it can be fixed and I’m not scared.

Garrett put the menacing brochure away, pulled out another one and began telling me my choices of how to control termites in Texas. It came down to either pumping a “liquid” (which was colored green on the brochure) in gallons under my grass, plants and flowers around the house OR installing “bait houses” around the property.

“What’s in the green liquid?” I asked.

“It’s a non-toxic fluid that the termites cannot get through or survive…”

“It’s a poisonous pesticide then and I don’t want it around my family.” I asserted.

“Well, I wouldn’t call it that. We use it at nursery schools and hospitals and my company has paid for studies so we know it’s safe,” he said rather sheepishly.

“Okay, Garrett, your company paid for the studies and if I had more time I would ask you which nursery schools and hospitals you use that for and I would avoid them like the plague. Pesticides are not an option at my house, in my food or in my garden. Please tell me about that bait choice.”

Long story short, the bait thing is a little less lethal although not pleasant if you are a termite (It stunts their growth so they never come to maturity and can never lay eggs) and after I talk to several neighbors to find out if this is something truly necessary I’ll figure out what I want to do.

Shortly after Garrett left, an air conditioning repairman came. He started by trying to alarm me with dire and disastrous predictions about my units and before even diagnosing the current problem was trying to sell me a pre-paid maintenance program that I know I don’t need. Little did he yet know he had met his match.

“I am not scared.” I said which of course disarmed him. “I’m not scared of air conditioners finally blowing out or anything else about a house blowing out! That’s what things in houses do when their life is over. That’s what we do when our lives are over. I just need to know what is needed right at this moment for this unit to be working correctly.” His face went pale but then he quickly, without drama fixed what needed to be fixed and high tailed it out of my house. Yay!

When he left I closed the door a little harder than I had to and locked it when Ryan bounded over in his youthful enthusiasm with a smile on his face said, “I have to find a woman like you!”

I was completely taken aback. First because I had forgotten he was even in the house and second because I was shocked he said that. It would have made way more sense to me if he had said I have to avoid women like you.

“You can’t have a woman like me.” I blurted back to Ryan.

“What? Why not?” he asked perturbed.

“Because you are too young.” I said. “A woman my age has likely been sabotaged, screwed over, dumped, deceived, betrayed, cheated, ripped off, undermined, manipulated, swindled, stabbed in the back, degraded, mislead, intimidated and humiliated and has finally learned to assert her boundaries on what she is and isn’t willing to tolerate in terms of how she is treated and that takes years. Ninety seven percent of the women your age simply have not been around long enough to experience all that and come out the other end.

“Well then,” he said with twinkle in his eye, “I’m just going to have to find someone older.”

“Well,” I laughed, “she’s going to have to be quite a bit older and I’m married.”

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