One thing about social media: It teaches you you're not the only person with problems. My connection to hundreds if not thousands of other human beings each day has made me more grateful for the good things in my life and more tolerant for the bad. No, everyone else is not sitting around on unicorn-fur couches sipping ambrosia -- they have cancer and bankruptcy and also new babies and cute puppies and lottery winnings. We are all in it together, for good and for bad.

As Beloved's job situation stretches on, I've found myself in several doctor's offices making sure the thing I have now -- my health -- is intact. Last week I went to a dermatologist to get my first-ever full-body skin cancer check. Basal skin cancer seems to be all the rage in my hometown for the farming crew, and I let my fair-skinned self turn lobster red way more times than I should have in my youth. I also tanned before prom, just sayin'. Luckily this time I came out clean, and I made an appointment to get checked again around my birthday every year.

Today I'm going in for a well-woman appointment. I haven't had one in years. Unfortunately, I was inspired to do so after a dear friend lost her cousin to sudden and unexpected girl cancer. Like two weeks unexpected. Though I don't even know this woman, I'm taken aback by the speed in which she was taken down, and it scared me enough to immediately book a Pap smear. I tell you this so if you are a woman, you will be sure to get one, too. So many girl cancers can be treated if caught early.

I'm not perfect with my health -- none of us are. And I try not to think too hard about my health, because I have anxiety disorder and if I think too hard about all the crazy-ass things that could give me cancer or brain damage or whatever, I'll freak out. It's so much easier to avoid breaking a bone than getting a terminal disease. I have a close relative who is dying of something completely awful right now that scares the shit out of me.

I try not to think about that.

But there are some easy things that I can think about, and one of them is skin cancer checks and another is well woman checks.

And then I'll go back to my job and hope everything else in my life works out just fine.

Hi everyone!

I've been immersed in politics for the past two weeks because of my job. And yes! I am very, very excited the conventions are ending tonight! For even though I'm very passionate about my politics (I apologize if you read my Twitter feed or its flowthrough to Facebook), I grow weary, too. It's all so big and so hard and what the hell, those numbers have more zeroes than my daughter has toes.

Part of what I've been doing this week is sitting on Twitter to see what people are saying about this or that. And so, this afternoon/evening, I found out two of my bloggy friends are doing some very cool stuff.

If you're sick of politics, why not go fight cancer with Charlie at How to Be a Dad or fight hunger with Mr Lady at Whiskey in My Sippy Cup?

Why not, indeed?

DJ Nibbles Celebates Helping People

I first felt it when I was pregnant with the little angel. I got scared, even though I know legs are often filled with random lumps that mean nothing, because my mother found lumps in her leg twice when I was just a little older than the little angel, and those lumps turned into years of fear, chemo, radiation, vomiting, pain and shuttling back and forth between friends and relatives.

I went to the dermatologist then. I was hugely pregnant. Because of its location on my thigh, the nurse told me to depants and sit on the chair. So I did, feeling vulnerable and exposed, for an hour and a half while I waited for someone to see me. When the doctor finally arrived, he poked at my leg, told me it was nothing and smirked at me. I started crying and insisted he take a baseline, which he did, but I never went back or called him again, because I was so mortified at the experience.

So then I tried to ignore it, because it's nothing.

This past winter, I was doing one of my aerobics DVDs when I had to do a weighted squat and tap my elbows on my thighs, and I happened to hit The Lump. And it HURT! I felt it and it was noticeably bigger than it had been before. 

For months, I would feel it in the shower. I noticed another one that kind of hurt near my knee, but it felt different. I worried.

Finally, over Easter, my family convinced me to go to my doctor with my laundry list of minor complaints. My gastro problems. My neck and back pain. And The Lump.

My doctor took them all seriously. She felt The Lump and sent me to get an ultrasound, where I saw The Lump. The ultrasound tech said it looked normal. My doctor said based on my family history and the fact that it was growing, she wanted it out.

Yesterday, I went to see the surgeon. I had to explain my life history to the med student -- the past surgeries, the eating disorder, the anxiety, the gastro problems. I had to take my pants off and I had to wait an hour for the doctor to come see me. When he did, he explained that cancer of this type is very very very very very very rare and the fact that I had someone in my family with it made it just very very rare. 

Then he told me BUT he had a friend who'd had a lump at a lipo incision and it turned out to be some other very very very very rare and bizarre form of cancer and she'd had to get chemo and radiation and the whole nine yards. I think he was trying to help me justify the expense and inconvenience of removing something that was probably nothing, but instead he just freaked me out even worse, which isn't hard when something very very very very very rare has already happened to your mother TWICE.

Fuck your very very rare.

So then he asked me what I wanted to do. And I said "I've been worrying about this for nine years. Get it out of me." And as I said it, I realized I was going to start crying again, thus completing the humiliating flashback to pregnancy. All three of them -- the doctor, the nurse and the med student, watched me try to make it through the doctor explaining what would happen next without letting the tears actually fall off my eyelashes. I made it to the last sentence, and then I couldn't contain them any more. 

Nobody said anything. The nurse handed me a box of tissues and they all filed out the door. I wondered what they were saying about me in the hall, because I've been listening to med students whose voices are louder than they think discuss whether my problems are serious a lot in these past few weeks. 

It's pretty awful.

But I'm getting The Lump taken out, because it's growing and it hurts and the little angel is almost the age that I was when I found out my life was going to get derailed for a few years. Now on the other side of things, I know I would probably handle cancer even worse with an existing anxiety disorder and no family in town to shuttle to. I've been kind of a shitty mom in the past few weeks anyway what with trying to handle adjustments at work and Beloved being on the road and the little angel and me getting sick for a week. I've yelled more than usual. I've looked up from email and realized I didn't know which yard she was playing in. I've made dinner late and it hasn't contained vegetables. I've gone in to check on her after she went to bed and realized I hadn't said I love you that day. 

I'm sad and I'm scared and I want it out. So it's coming out in two weeks.