don't look now

Literally, don't look.

A lot of running around today, starting with a very early (7:15AM!) eye appointment.  Yay me, the eyes are still doing fine, no changes noted, everything's stable and working fine.

Then home for just a bit, then out again to meet my principal, briefly, to sign my catechist certification paperwork.  Then to the post office to mail the paper work off. Then grocery shopping, and getting a fill up for the van -- 19+ gallons is surely a record?  I didn't know my gas tank was that big!  I believe this is the first time I've put gas in it since the beginning of May, so there's that.

Anyway, home, put groceries away, and then off to MDA for a quick bloodwork and ultrasound check.  Blood draw went very smoothly, 4 tubes from the right hand, easy-peasy.  Ultrasound?

Don't look.

Because I'm pretty sure I saw something when she switched on the Doppler, and it didn't look good: Round (bad), big (bad), lots of vascularization (very bad).   Yikes.  The technician only used the Doppler twice on that side, once to identify the carotid artery (unmistakable), and then to look at whatever this thing was.   But OF COURSE I am not a radiologist so I will now do my best to forget whatever it is I think that I saw.  It was probably just a reactive node.  Yes. Of course that's what it is.

Fortunately, I'll know by Wednesday the latest, that's my follow-up appointment.  In other news, my TSH is up to 0.31!!  This is the highest it has been when I'm not going for an RAI scan or treatment since my first surgery.  Curious what my Tg (thyroid cancer tumor marker) is going to be, whenever that comes in.  I'm actually getting better at this being patient thing.  I guess practice really does help.

Update: "Normal-appearing cervical lymph nodes", one on right (1.7 x 0.4 cm) and one on the left, the one I saw: 2.0 x 0.8 cm.  These seem pretty big to me, but "normal-appearing" is very reassuring.   I love how quickly these reports get posted to the patient portal at MDA.

a whole month gone...

The world has gone crazy, and I don't know what to make of it, so I don't say anything.  

Here in my own little world, for me, things are fine.  I finished school without incident, and we were able to have a "physical distancing" graduation Mass for our students three weeks later than we normally would have. It was great seeing everyone again, but sad at the same time that we weren't able to all come together as we used to.  It sounds ridiculously pretentious to say my heart aches for what we've lost, but it does ache.  I just don't talk about it, out loud.  

Over the past two weeks I completed the catechist certification class that's required by my diocese for all Catholic school teachers.  It was a well-structured class but we did not meet in person. I'm conflicted about that, too.  I appreciated very much not having to drive into downtown Phoenix every day for two weeks, and being there from 9-5 each day.  Those days would have been very long and exhausting!  Instead, we had daily videos to watch and worksheets to complete, and they were simultaneously well done and draining.  The content of the courses was great, but I could see how much we were missing by not being there in person.  This experience highlighted once again for me that so-called "distance learning" is often just "Here's what the lecture would have been," discarding all of the other things that would have happened in a classroom setting -- when all the other things are often what produces and develops the actual learning!  Think of the difference between watching a cooking video and actually being in the kitchen with someone who demonstrates and then helps you as you work your way through a recipe.  

I don't know why so many people were OK with reducing education to such an extent.  There's a lot you can do to preserve or translate in-class experiences, but it does take an effort to implement them.  Of course this is on my mind a lot these day because we're all wondering what it's going to be like when we head back to school in August.

DH has been working from home and working a zillion hours, so it's nice for him that he doesn't also have to deal with traffic and everything.  It's too easy for him to "go to work" and therefore I see him logging in to his work computer at all hours and over the weekends, but he really does like it... the only issue is that his workstation is set up in the family room, which is open to the kitchen, and he often gets calls during the day.  I don't want to be a disturbance or distraction, so I end up hanging out upstairs in our room for most of the day, which is not really what I want to do.  I've proposed moving his office space into the other half of the family room and making a divider with our bookcases, but he's not too keen on that idea.  I am, because the family room is ridiculously large and I've been wanting to do something about it for ages.  We may just end up moving him into the guest room or one of the kids' rooms upstairs, because it seems that he'll be able to continue working from home for a while. 

On the offspring front, from youngest to oldest:  DS2 is moving through the enlistment process. He scored in the 98 percentile on his aptitude test (AVSAB) and he was offered an MOS as an aircraft structural repairer, which would give him a chance to use both his hands and his brain.  Given a ship-out date in mid-August, he then went for his MEPS exam, where the medical exam revealed he has a small hernia!  None of us had any idea.  So now he's scheduled to have that repaired this week, with hopefully a quick two week recovery.  That will give him a little more than a month to get in shape for boot camp, if all goes well.  I'm going to miss him terribly; we've been hanging out together in the evenings, watching anime.  It's a great diversion from all the insanity going on in the world.

DD declared herself an anarcho-communist and came out in favor of the rioters last month (via her social media, not in person), and that led to some friction between us.  I'd been keeping an eye on her Twitter just to have a connection, but she deleted both her Twitter and Instagram accounts last week.  She may have decided to make new ones, or she may have just quit social media again, and I hope the latter is the case.  I had a great call with her this week and she's busy with her physics class and working on "bug museum" work, going into the lab two days a week to work on DNA sequencing. Some of their samples are quite old and that's less than optimal for extracting (never mind sequencing) DNA, so they're having to try all sorts of techniques to actually get what they need.  It's great experience for her, and she's really enjoying it.  She has also applied for a job at the new Ulta they are building nearby, and that would be really fun for her, too, and good to get her out of the house.  Her course load this coming year shouldn't be too heavy, so she would be able to work during term, too.

DS1 continues working at Amazon and making bank.  He should be able to pay off his car pretty soon, and DH helped him set up a brokerage account so he can start investing some of his savings, too.  I talked with him not long ago about what he'd like to be doing, and maybe getting out there to meet people, but with the COVID situation, that's not really an option right now.  Overall he seems pretty happy with his own life although he too is quite distressed about what's going on in this country and the world right now.

Since we had to cancel our annual summer trip to the east coast, DH and I will be taking a road trip later in July.  I'll write more about it if it turns out we actually do it.  Already one part was canceled, literally the day after I made the arrangements.  With any luck things will become less crazy, and we'll be able to go.  DH has far too many vacation hours, and his company has asked the employees to plan so everyone is not away in the fourth quarter. Eventually DH will take some time and go out to Connecticut to see his parents, and we are also planning on travelling to see DS2's boot camp graduation ceremony in October.  Some days I feel a bit stir crazy but mostly I'm OK with just hanging around.  My class just finished and I have a small list of tasks to accomplish for next school year that I'll work on next week in between doctor's appointments:  eye check up, skin check up, thyroid ultrasound, labs, and followup, plus driving DS2 to his surgery.  It will be strange to be going out so much on so many consecutive days!  But it will be nice to have things to do, also. 

I have good days and bad days.  My sleep is disturbed in that I'm going to bed late and even so, not falling asleep for hours at least one or two days a week.  When that happens I'm a zombie for the next few days.  I'm working on hip stabilization exercises because something's gotta give there, it's driving me crazy.  My hands are a lot better, just a little bit creaky in the morning but usually OK after just a little while.  Still trying to drop a few pounds. I'd love to lose 10, at this point I'd be happy to drop below 150 for more than two consecutive days.  On the other hand, staying at my current weight is not the end of the world and I'm not convinced that eating a handful of potato chips occasionally is going to kill me.  I just don't want to buy new clothes! 

These past few months -- and  the two to come -- are exercises in patience.  I'm working on not getting so frustrated about things I can't change.  My family, even my extended family, is safe and healthy both physically and financially.  I continuously remind myself to appreciate all the good things in my life and let the rest go.  It's hard, and I do worry about what's to come, but there's no point in that.  The truth is, the future is always uncertain.  If it seems even more uncertain now, that's just because I wasn't really paying too much attention before, just making the assumption that things would always continue on as they had been.  That was never a good assumption, but I was allowed to keep it for quite a while until reality intervened.  I hope we can come through this period of turmoil stronger and more resilient, exchanging our complacency for gratitude and a determination to do whatever we can to be good and do good.