Being on sabbatical means that I could easily fly down to the Land of My Youth to be with my mom today when she had a lumpectomy. I certainly could have done this anyway -- teachers sometimes have to leave school to be with family members, obviously -- but it's nice not to have to worry about school and to come down for the whole week without a second thought.
(Well, I have had many second thoughts, since a week with my mom is nothing to sneeze at, but those second thoughts haven't been about school at all.)
She had breast cancer back in 2008 and had a cancerous lump removed from her left breast and then had radiation, but no chemotherapy. This November, at her annual mammogram, they found some calcification, which can mean nothing or something; given her history, they decided to do a biopsy. The biopsied section wasn't cancerous but had some questionable cells; under normal circumstances, they would have just kept an eye on it, but again, given her history, they decided to take out a larger section of the breast and biopsy it.
So that was today's medical event. And all went smoothly, I'm glad to say. They took out a section about as big as the top joint of a thumb. She's been icing her breast throughout the day, as she's supposed to, and amazingly hasn't had any pain and hasn't even seemed tired this afternoon.
I, on the other hand, wound up taking a two-hour nap! I'd clearly been keyed up and on alert in the various waiting rooms (there were three different waiting rooms during the morning's adventure), and once she was home and I'd given her lunch and she was relaxing and seemed just fine, I crashed. And even during my nap, I'd suddenly come awake and sit up, all alert, and then lie back down and go right back to sleep.
So now we're having a cozy evening in front of the fire; she's reading the New Yorker and I'm alternating between reading Jonathan Sarna's American Judaism and cross-stitching.
(I also realized that I could just unenroll myself from the Schoology courses that my replacement teachers have taken over from me, so that I won't see the updates they send my -- oops, no, their! -- students. Much more relaxing not to get those emails.
Glad to hear that your mom and you are doing ok! And praying it won't be cancer a second time. My brother-in-law has a fourth recurrence of liposarcoma tumors on his left thigh and since he's had three surgeries (actually four), the only option now is to amputate his leg. I know, awful. In any case. I'm not supposed to be sharing this info, but nobody who knows me IRL will find it buried here in your comment section. And if "bloggers in common" see it, it's not a problem.
Oh, yeah, and you should totally unenroll (spell-check doesn't recognize that word!) from the courses!
Posted by: L-Mama(e) in Translation | January 09, 2018 at 10:12 PM
L, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother-in-law's cancer. And amputation -- awful!
And I am unenrolling right and left!
Posted by: What Now? | January 11, 2018 at 07:53 PM