We are gradually and with huge effort figuring out what we’re looking for in a school for Elizabeth, who wants to study art:

1. She does not want to go to An Art School; she wants to go to a school that has a good art degree but also has lots of other degrees. This is in part because she would like to stand out a little with her short dyed hair and interesting clothes/jewelry; and in part because she would like to be able to earn a living and so she will probably want to make it a combined or double major and/or add some minors; and in part because she finds art students annoying.

2. Majors we are looking for (but she is not at all sure): Illustration; Studio Art (Painting); Undeclared Art. (Are you about to suggest Graphic Design? So far she is not interested in Graphic Design. But I don’t think it would be a bad idea for the college to offer it, just in case.)

3. Apparently we are supposed to be looking for colleges that offer a BFA or BVA.

4. She wants a bigger college rather than a smaller one.

5. She’d prefer a separate campus, rather than one that is integrated with a town/city.

6. It should probably be in a state where, if she experiences an ectopic pregnancy, she won’t be left to die from it.

7. We are not expecting to get significant financial aid, and it is apparently pretty rare to get merit aid to major in art, so it needs to be a relatively affordable school. (We have gotten a fair number of suggestions from people my age who went to school quite a long time ago and don’t realize that the tuition at their formerly affordable school is now $80,000/year or whatever.)

Has this list helped us create a list of schools for her to apply to? Absolutely not. But it has let us rule out one school after another! Which I guess is helpful in its own way!

I don’t even know how to LOOK. I have tried many search terms, and what I mostly get is lists of schools that include, like, Yale and Harvard. No, yes, I have heard of Yale and Harvard, and I am aware they are Good Schools, but I am looking specifically for schools that have a good ART PROGRAM, not a Clickbuzz list of ten colleges some content-creator has heard of. I want a school that has a ceramics studio and a glass-blowing studio and a furniture-design studio, and graphic arts and illustration and studio painting, and an advisor who can say “Hey, you know what makes money if you combine it with art, other than working in a coffee shop? THIS.” I want a school that KNOWS majoring in art is a dicey thing, and is making sure they have a Genuine Quality Art Program Where the Degree Means Something.

There is a valance in our bathroom that has been Visibly Very Dusty ever since we had the hardwood floors refinished before we moved in…which was in 2018. Tonight I finally took it down and laundered it. I would love for this to be one of those “And it was so quick and easy and I don’t understand why I didn’t do it AGES ago, isn’t human psychology RIDICULOUS??” stories, and that was what I had in mind when I decided to tackle it. But actually it was a tremendous hassle and I don’t know if it was worth it.

It turned out that, as with many, many things in this house, the curtain rod was put up by an amateur who considered himself Handy—but who, just to give you an idea of the pervasive results of said handiness, wired a bunch of outlets BACKWARDS, so that when the inspector put in his little testing thingie, the little testing thingie registered an Oh No Fire Danger temperature within seconds. (We got $5000 off the price of the house to have an electrician fix those.)

Anyway. Taking down the curtain was perplexing: it was hard to understand the curtain-rod situation, and a cracking sound accompanied the understanding. Laundering the curtain was simple. Putting it back up was a task that broke the curtain-rod situation—or more likely it broke while I was taking the curtain down and there was a cracking sound, but it was while putting it back up that a piece of the assembly broke off. Now one side of the rod is just sort of balanced there, so that one day it can fall down and startle me.

Also: laundering it made me truly understand how ugly it is. When it was dusty, it was easy to think that the dust was the real problem. But now I see it is a valance made of faded 1980s shiny black prom-dress material, and it does not look very nice in our bathroom—which is OF COURSE light grey, as you should have known just from hearing we bought the house in 2018. Light-grey and black are theoretically compatible colors, but no. I would Just Replace It, but it is overwhelming me to think of removing the curtain rod, installing a curtain rod that makes sense, touching up the light grey paint, and choosing a new curtain. I remember doing those exact things when we moved into our first house over 20 years ago, but I was over 20 years younger then, and hadn’t yet started following politics.

Meanwhile, I have also been tearing up the pea-patch in other ways. (I am thinking of charting these energy surges, just to See. I feel as if for much of each month I am unable to cope, and then suddenly I am fixing/cleaning/booking everything.) I have arranged for the twins to attend the open house of a college that looks like it might be a good fit for both of them, and I have forced myself to get over the cost of a motel for that trip. We have started working on the Common App together, and it is already causing me to lose tooth enamel. I have purchased tickets to a musical in the nearest big city, not just for Henry, who is turning out to be a Theater Kid, but also because I love to see musicals/plays and want to see more of them. I have donated blood, and have set up my next appointment. I have panicked about our electrical bill, which has doubled, and NPR says I can expect it to triple; I have walked fretfully around the house turning off things that can be turned off. I have cleaned the dishwasher filter, and have run self-clean cycles on the dishwasher and the washing machine. And of course I have laundered the dusty black valance. (Still to do: calling a chimney service, because the Former Resident Amateur vented the dryer into a fireplace chimney, and that has not seemed like a good idea the entire nearly-four-years we’ve lived here, but nor have I gotten around to doing anything about it.)

Excuse me but why in the year of our lord 2022 does our annual school registration form still force us to choose between M and F, not only for each student but for each parent and each sibling and each emergency contact?? In an emergency, when my chosen emergency contact arrives at the school, does the school office intend to VERIFY IF THAT CONTACT IS M OR F and if so BY WHAT METHOD DO THEY INTEND TO MAKE THAT VERIFICATION. This is a question I asked in a letter sent to the superintendent and cc’d to the principal and the person who handles Title IX issues. I don’t know if this quite qualifies as a Title IX issue, but I was willing to invest the additional envelope and stamp just in case. Additionally annoying: I sent this same letter two years ago AND had to talk on the phone to the principal about it, and the form STILL ISN’T CHANGED.

(If this were a paper form, I would just leave that question blank and let them come at me if they felt up to it. But this is an online form, and it’s a required field, and there is no available option other than M or F.)

Also, I was complaining and asking for advice on Twitter, and Slim had the idea to contact IT using a “technical problem with the form”-type link, which strikes me as brilliant and tailored. No need to go in with banners and Reasons, talking about Inclusive Education and so forth, when you can just get the IT person to go in and edit the HTML or whatever!

Anyway. I have been feeling a little cranky at work recently (underpaid, and some days the tasks are almost unbearably repetitive and tedious), but wanted to tell you about a real perk (I wish that to be spelled “perq,” but it just isn’t) that happened today. I follow Jeanna Kadlec on Twitter, almost certainly because of seeing some of her tweets retweeted. And she has a book coming out, called Heretic (Target link, Amazon link), and it’s a memoir, and she’s an ex-evangelical like I am, so I am very interested in reading it! But I looked it up in our library system, and it’s another library that has it (or rather WILL have it, when it comes out in October), and when I tried to place a request for it, I got an error notification about that title not being available for holds.

So I went to our reference librarian, and I’ll bet you imagined an older lady in a cardigan and glasses, but actually she’s in her mid-20s and wears fashionable clothes and also contact lenses (and a cardigan, they seriously all do wear cardigans). And I asked her why I was getting this message, and she said some of the libraries in our system have a policy that the new-release books can’t go out on interlibrary loan, which is fair enough: if that particular library ordered the book, they want their particular patrons to have first crack at it. She said usually that restriction is from 1-6 months.

Then she said, “Let me see if our library has ordered a copy; they probably have, it’s probably just not in the system yet.” And then she said, “Oh! No, we haven’t. Well, I’ll just order one right now.” And she went typey-typey-typey, and then it was in the library’s to-order cart. And then she went typey-typey-typey again and put me on hold for the not-even-ordered-yet copy, so I’ll be the first one to get it when it’s published/processed. And I am underpaid and my work is getting a little boring, but that was FUN.

Also, I feel I should mention that even though I personally went from “mentioning book” to “being on hold for a copy that was ordered because I mentioned it” in about 60 seconds, and that is definitely because I work there, it’s worth noting that the reference librarians frequently do this for non-co-worker patrons too! Our library has a form, and probably your library does too, for a patron to use if they can’t find a book within the system; the librarians will first check our wider network of libraries (there are some libraries OUR LIBRARY can borrow from, even if OUR PATRONS cannot) (we sometimes need to wheedle) and, if they can’t find the book, they will evaluate it and see if we want to purchase it, and we have a budget for doing that. Sometimes the book is out of print and too expensive, but if it’s just one that has escaped our notice, the librarian will often think, “Sure, let’s give it a whirl!” and order it.

Nothing dramatic has happened since we last spoke, but I still have this feeling of not knowing where to START! I’ve had more social stuff crammed into this week than I’m used to, and it’s been great but also it is seriously cutting into my screen time.

I have seen friends, and wish to say again how WORTH IT it is if you can possibly manage it. I can’t take any credit for making it happen: it was someone else who formed the group, and chose the people, and kept arranging meetings until the habit was formed; I was fortunate to have been included. So if you can…Be Included in a Great Friend Group, I guess is what I seem to be suggesting to you, well then I heartily recommend it! We sat outside on a summer evening with our wine, and I peered a little tipsily at my friends who were so beautifully candlelit by the bug-deflecting torches, and I felt so LUCKY.

Also this week, our household went away for a few days to get together with extended family. For all previous trips, I have put out a mixing bowl of dry kibble and left the faucet dripping for the cats, and off we’ve gone, feeling lucky not to be dealing with dogs. But right now we have a cat with two daily medications who is in the middle of probably being diagnosed with lung cancer—and, most importantly of all, seems to only be able to eat wet food, which can’t be left out for days the way dry food can be. We’ve never boarded a cat before, and I was very stressed about the idea, and I wasn’t sure if we’d even be able to get a spot on such short notice; but I called the vet and they DID have an opening, and it all went well. The person in charge of the boarding program was everything you’d hope for in such a role, and she texted me photos of the cat with little messages that purported to be from the cat himself, giving me information such as “I peed and pooped and have eaten almost a whole can of food already!” and then little pawprint emojis. Everything you’d hope for.

Oh, and actually, something dramatic DID happen: at the extended-family gathering my mother lost consciousness while sitting in a chair, and we could not revive her; and we called 911 (specifically PAUL called 911, and did such a good job with it that I hope to delegate that task to him on all future occasions), and she is fine but it was a bit of a Startling Event. And it turns out they sometimes send firefighters to help the EMTs bring someone down stairs to an ambulance, and many firefighters are–oh what would be a good way to describe it?–“calendar-worthy.” Well! Some excitement all around. And in case you have a place to file such information: if someone faints / loses consciousness while seated (that is, they have not been in an accident or hit their heads, and there is no worry about broken neck/bones), 911 will tell you to lay them down on the floor if possible, to help get blood/oxygen to their brain. Perhaps you already knew this; I did not. Also: it turns out none of us really knew how to move an unconscious person from a chair to the floor. We managed it, but I was glad EMTs/firefighters were not watching us do it, and I am motivated to look for videos showing me how to do it right.

One of my favorite moments was when the EMTs had brought my mom back to consciousness and they were asking her some routine questions about medications and substances; and, after the EMTs asked if she’d been drinking plenty of fluids and she said yes, one of the firefighters (tattooed muscled arms in fitted firefighter t-shirt, shaved head) turned to me and said quietly “That true about the fluids?,” and let me tell you I IMMEDIATELY betrayed my mother (she is NOTORIOUS for leaving her water glass completely untouched at meals), and they hooked up an IV. Lie to the police if necessary, but tell THE WHOLE TRUTH to the EMTs. Even if they’re NOT cute, and crossing their tattooed arms, and looking down with warm eyes and a head tilted as if to invite confidences—as this one may or may not have been.

Well, I have a sad update on the cat laryngitis. When we looked up cat laryngitis online, it said it’s nothing to be concerned about—but that if you notice the cat panting, or breathing through its mouth, a vet visit is warranted. And the cat breathed through his mouth a couple of times, and so I called the vet, feeling like a Right Fool who was about to pay $500 to find out her cat had a cold. But instead it seems to be lung cancer.

This does not mean you should panic if your cat temporarily loses its meow! And in fact, the one thing bothering the vet is that the Area of Concern on the x-ray is not in an area that explains the cat laryngitis. She says the most likely explanation by far is that there is an additional Area of Concern in/near his larynx, and that it just didn’t show up on the x-ray, as many such things do not; but she says there is a Slim Hope that this could instead be a lung parasite, which WOULD account for the Area of Concern AND the laryngitis. So she has given him a course of anti-parasite medicine Just To Make Sure before we start having Hard Discussions. But her entire manner told me she thinks this will not work and that we will be having the Hard Discussion.

One of the things I love about this vet is how easy she makes those hard discussions. She always acts as if she would be 100% Here For It if I were to tell her I wanted to do everything in our expensive power to save the cat—but she also acts as if she personally thinks it makes absolute sense to instead choose NOT to do those things.

I am sad, of course: he’s a good cat; and he’s Elizabeth’s baby, and so I also feel sad for her. But—this is a 12-14-year-old cat with Cat IBD; and one of his kidneys shut down for no apparent reason; and he had kidney stone surgery recently, and the lab analysis of the stones shows they are the kind that will almost certainly recur and can’t really be prevented. The wheels are coming off this cat, is what I’m saying. And although I was willing to pay for the original kidney-stone surgery, and also pay for the expensive food just in case it DID work and he never needed more surgeries, my feeling was that with Elizabeth leaving for college in a year…and a cat who is not happy when Elizabeth is not home…well, perhaps we could consider the cat to be in his Final Year. And if the stones didn’t recur, well, lovely! We’d be happy to continue having him with us! But…if they DID recur…well, I mean, the timing seemed about right. Lung cancer may change the timing, but not by MUCH.

I wish I had asked the vet what kind of timeframe we were looking at. She mentioned that we can keep him comfortable for awhile / until it’s Time by switching from the IBD Dose of his steroid to the Cancer Dose, but I don’t know if we’re talking about weeks? months? It seems like if he DOES have something in/near his larynx, and it is already messing with his breathing, that it won’t be very long before there are Quality of Life issues. Well, we are giving him lots of skritches and cuddles, and we are taking lots of photos.

Hello! Do we have any BOURBON aficionados in our midst? (I had THREE spelling errors in my first attempt at spelling the word “aficionado” AND had to look up the definition to make sure I was using it right. I was using it right: it means KNOWLEDGEABLE AND ENTHUSIASTIC about something.)

My brother had a fun idea for his birthday this year—oh, but first I should tell you that we are a WISH LIST family. I think that’s important to know, since otherwise you might be thinking, “Wait, your brother is TELLING YOU what to give him for his birthday??”—and no, he would never, this is an idea on his wish list, and wish lists are only for family members who WANT to use wish lists: that is, there is no feeling that anyone MUST or SHOULD choose from the wish list, and plenty of feeling that it is EVEN BETTER to go off-list; but SOME members of our extended family (NOT ME, it may surprise you to learn) are TOO ANXIOUS to buy anything that isn’t explicitly listed and linked to. Plus, most of us find wish lists fun, and a good way to get an idea of what SORTS of things the person might be interested in this year: some years someone might have a lot of novelty t-shirts and jewelry; other years they might have a bunch of books and mugs and treats; other years they might have mostly postcards and Etsy art. (Those are all me.)

Back to where I was. My brother had a fun idea for his birthday this year, because his wish list is very sparse right now, and he knows this will lead to some hand-wringing. He suggested that, since bourbon is perpetually on his list and he loves to try new kinds, anyone who wanted a wish list idea should choose a bottle of bourbon and then he’d have a bouquet of birthday bourbons to try, which he would find very fun.

I am NOT a bourbon aficionado (one misspelling this time, and that was WHILE LOOKING AT THE CORRECT SPELLING), but I AM an aficionado of OTHER things, so I know how sometimes an aficionado can look at someone’s likes/dislikes in their aficionado category and immediately get excited and start making suggestions. So I am hoping some of you are bourbon aficionados or perhaps you have a sibling/spouse/friend/co-worker who is a bourbon aficionado, and that you/they would find it fun to look at my brother’s list/chart and make some suggestions:

I could, of course, just buy a bottle from Old Favorites, or from Liked and Want More (ignore Looking For: it’s a standing category that happens to be empty this year), but it would be more fun to buy something he hasn’t tried yet, so what I am hoping is that someone is looking at that list right now and saying “OOOOOoooooo you know what I think he’d like??” and then going to the comments section to answer their own question.

Ignore PRICE: not only am I INTERESTED in hearing even about bourbons outside whatever my price range might be, but also there are other people buying gifts for my brother who might have different price ranges, and also-also I might want to buy a more expensive bourbon for a milestone birthday later on.

Oh, and I am familiar with the idea of a gift box / advent calendar of small bottles of various bourbons, but he’s had that gift at least once, and I think at least twice, so I am less inclined to go that route unless you are thinking “Well okay but THIS PARTICULAR GIFT BOX is especially great!”

I have taken the twins on some college visits! We went on an overnight trip and saw three colleges, though one of them was a self-guided tour because we couldn’t find a regular tour that worked with our schedule. We all felt that the self-guided tour was almost useless. We had THOUGHT that a self-guided tour, where we walk around and read little paragraphs the Admissions office has composed, would be as good as a tour led by a perky student the Admissions office has hired to say things the Admissions office has composed, but for some reason it absolutely was not. We came away with almost no impression of the college at all. Well, now we know not to bother with self-guided tours—and we can go back another time for a regular tour.

I think the biggest accomplishment was just DOING ANY TOURS AT ALL. It is so hard to get started! With each kid after the first one, I resolved to get started on tours EARLIER—like, spring of junior year. Yet each time, here I am in late summer, barely begun. And very soon it will be fall of their senior year, and they will be too busy to take days off for college visits! I wring the hands.

Part of the issue is that Paul usually does quite a few of the college tours (he has most Fridays off during the summer, so that’s when he took Rob/William on tours), but he has been significantly affected by his kidney-stone issues for over a month now. Which reminds me to update you: he has had his second kidney-stone surgery, which went SO MUCH BETTER than the first one. Just for starters, this time we knew what to expect from the whole process, so this time his blood pressure at the hospital was at reasonable “nervous about impending medical procedure / feel uncomfortable in hospital smock and leg-squeezing things” levels rather than “so um do you take anything for high blood pressure? are you feeling okay right now? let’s just leave that cuff on and try again in a few minutes, okay?” levels. Also, the first procedure removed the stone that was hurting him, so this time he went into it well-rested, well-fed, etc. And finally: THIS time he didn’t come out of anesthesia to hear that it was NOT all over and there would have to be ANOTHER SURGERY. That was not good for morale.

Another medical update: the cat with kidney issues has lost his meow. We looked it up online and found that cats can and do get Cat Laryngitis. Let’s see if I can post this little video of me asking the cat in my Talking To Cats voice if he has cat laryngitis:

Oh! and I wanted to ask you about your favorite things to bake for bake sales. Henry’s theater group is going to have a concession stand at each performance, and they’d like contributions from the families. I’m curious to know what you personally like to make for bake sales, but I am also hugely hoping that we have in our midst people who have volunteered at bake-sale tables and KNOW WHAT SELLS WELL. I am also planning to donate some pre-packaged manufactured items (snack-packs of Oreos, snack-size bags of chips, that kind of thing), since I know it can be difficult/impossible for people with food allergies to buy things from bake sales.

One important thing to know is that the concessions stand will be OUTDOORS in SUMMER HEAT, so I don’t want to make anything TOO MELTY. I’m going to go right ahead and make things with chocolate chips in them; but for example I have a recipe for yummy bars that have a thick layer of chocolate/butterscotch on top, and those would just be a MESS, so I will not make those.

Things to discuss when we have the time and energy:

1. Postcards to Voters. Is it a great way to manage those evenings when one’s mental health is not what it should be? (I recently managed a very bad brain day by alternating doom-scrolling and postcard-writing.) Or is it a giant waste of time and money, and a way to FEEL like one is Doing Something when one is Not?

2. Follow-up biopsy feelings. I still have a bruise, and in fact it’s a little larger now. I also still have irritation from the adhesive. It’s been nine days.

3. Follow-up cat kidney issues. The vet got back to us and said that the kidney stone analysis shows they are the kind that can’t really be prevented, so Repeat Issues are very likely. The STARTING recommendations (prescription food, regular x-rays, regular urinalysis) are $$$ per year; each surgery is several thousand dollars; I don’t know yet if there are procedures between prevention and surgery, or what they cost. At what financial point does a person decide that a 12-year-old pet should not be…er, sustained? What if that particular cat’s Support Person is leaving for college in a year and we were all already kind of worried about how he would survive that, considering how weird and clingy and yowly he was when she went to camp for two weeks? Well. Prescription cat food for thought.

4. Follow-up Paul kidney issues. He has a second procedure a week from now. Maybe let’s wait for the follow-up until after that.

5. I have been panicking. I wish to re-tell you the story about the time I was seeing a psychiatrist, and I was explaining in a fraught, breacking voice the weird side effects I was having from a medication (for example, seeing pedestrians and feeling certain that Something Bad was going to happen to them) and she listened carefully, and then said in a very calm, almost bored, diagnostic tone, “Panic.” She wrote it down. She prescribed some short-term medication. I have been once again having a rather extended session of panicky feelings. Also: I got together with friends, and it seemed to snap the panic streak. I recommend having friends, if that’s an option where you are.

6. Henry has been doing a summer youth theater thing, and I am so happy he is Finding His People/Interests and so forth, but also I am so exhausted by this. The transportation alone!! IT CONSUMES MY LIFE. And it is nowhere NEAR what parents manage for a kid in sports!! This reminds me of high school and college, where we as students would complain that every teacher/professor acted as if their class was your ONLY CLASS. Every kid activity acts like it thinks they are the ONLY ACTIVITY for your ONLY KID.

7. Henry has a rash spreading over his face/torso/arms/legs. Trying to get this looked at has been such a surprising hassle. Our (Catholic) pediatric clinic has switched to a (Catholic) health management system that has RUINED EVERYTHING. It used to be that if one of the kids was sick I would call the pediatrician phone number, and I would say “Oh, good morning, may I please speak to a nurse?,” and then I would tell the nurse what was going on, and either they would make me an appointment or else they would tell me what to do instead. NOW, I call an automated phone tree, which gradually allows me to select the numbers that indicate I wish to make a Sick Child appointment for an Established Patient—but then I talk to the same receptionist who answers allllll the calls ANYway, and she LEAVES A MESSAGE for the nurse, who calls me back HOURS LATER, and if I can’t answer the phone at that moment (driving; at an appointment with another child; in the bathroom; at work) they leave a message and I have to call back and LEAVE ANOTHER MESSAGE and WAIT MORE HOURS. HOW IS THIS BETTER. Anyway, the nurse told me it sounded fine and he didn’t need to be seen, and to give him benadryl and use hydrocortisone cream. And the rash continued to spread over the next couple of days, so I had to call back and do the entire system again, and the second nurse was quite alarmed that the rash was also on his face (“It’s not on his FACE or anything, right?,” she asked, despite me having told the first nurse that it was on his face and around his eyes); and eventually I got an appointment for him for this morning, and the doctor thinks it’s a result of contact with some kind of poisonous plant—BUT HERE IS THE THING: HE HAS NOT ENCOUNTERED ANY PLANTS. So. I mean. I will give him the steroid. And maybe it will work! But why did NEITHER the nurses NOR the doctor think my REPEATED “No, he has not been in nature” answer was relevant for the diagnosis of “contact with poisonous plant”???

8. One reason I emphasize “(Catholic)” in the previous item is that the medical center itself is emphasizing it. I used to give NO THOUGHT AT ALL to the “St.” part of the medical center’s name. But now there is a new, large poster in the pediatric waiting room, explaining that this is a CATHOLIC medical center, and as such they must HONOR their CORE VALUES above ALL ELSE. Isn’t that ominous, in the current climate? My loose plan is to MOVE US ELSEWHERE. Religious institutions can KEEP IT.

9. Some summers feel kind of languid, with lots of time for fun—or possibly I am misremembering, and they ALWAYS feel as if they OUGHT to feel languid with lots of time for fun, but ACTUALLY they are SO BUSY and we have NO TIME FOR ANYTHING? In any case, this is a summer when we have not even had time to discuss what we want to do this summer—and now it is almost August.

10. Rob got a job in Seattle! It is…fully remote. I am concerned he is going to LOSE HIS MIND if he is living AND working in a one-room studio apartment in an expensive big city where he has NO NEED TO LIVE for a fully-remote job. But he is a grown-up and this is up to him to figure out.

11. Next week I am taking the twins on a two-day road trip to visit a couple of colleges, including the one Rob went to. I am REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS. Hotel room! (I got one for the twins, and another for just me.) Car snacks! A couple of days away from home!

As you will likely remember but let’s have a link anyway, I don’t want to act like I assume you are hanging on my every word, I was scheduled for a biopsy today to investigate some microcalcifications. I loved the radiologist, who explained excitedly to me that the biopsy involved using TRIGONOMETRY. I have such a crush on women in STEM who love their jobs (I am similarly smitten with our oral surgeon, who wears a headlamp at all times); I hung on her every word, even though I myself would not remember how to use trigonometry even if you dangled me off the side of a cliff and threatened to let go unless I could find a cosine. (I got an A in Trigonometry in high school, but it is because I am very good at test-taking and at figuring out which problems to plug into which formulas, and not because I ever remotely understood what I was doing.)

Where was I? Oh, yes: so today was the day of the biopsy. I was a little nervous. The instructions said I could wear deodorant if I wanted to, which was nice. I was not supposed to take any blood-thinners of any kind (including ibuprofen) for 72 hours beforehand. It was suggested that I have a meal before the appointment, to avoid getting faint/shaky. I did not like the sound of “getting faint/shaky.”

As with a mammogram, I was instructed to undress down to the waist and put on the hospital smock “like a bathrobe” (opening in front). Unlike during a mammogram, I had to climb up onto a high table (as in, I had a two-step stepstool to help me, and I used both steps). The table had a hole in the middle of it. I am always anxious about positioning myself on tables for medical purposes (I feel clumsy, and when I’m nervous it’s harder to understand/follow the instructions), and I would say this particular positioning was one I was glad to have had a chance to gear up for (the radiologist gave me an overview when she was telling me I needed a biopsy). I talked myself through it by telling myself that I am HARDLY the only person who does not have experience in how to correctly lie down on a breast biopsy table, and that I am DEFINITELY NOT the only person who needs to be adjusted after the first attempt.

Anyway. The basic idea is this: one lies down on the table on one’s stomach so that The Breast in Question is down through the hole in the table, but the Breast Not in Question as well as The Ribcage Below the Breast in Question are well-supported by the surrounding table, so you don’t feel as if you will fall through. They give you a couple of thin soft pads to position under your head as you prefer; I found it most comfy to use both pads and also put my hand under the pads for a little extra lift—but this is how I sleep, with a hand under my pillow, so maybe that’s just what felt Right to me, and not what would feel Right to others. In my case, The Breast in Question was the left one, so I was supposed to turn my head to my right, and it was my right arm that was up under my head; I wanted my left arm up like that too, in a sort of Sunbather’s Pose, but they did not let me do that: my left arm had to be down by my side, palm up. It felt okay once I got used to it, but still a little awkward.

The most difficult part is RELAXING. You don’t have to hold yourself up! You are lying down, and well-supported! But it FELT like I had to hold myself up. I kept having to remind myself that I could just lie there and rest and be as comfy as possible, considering the circumstances.

Both the radiologist and the nurse were good about telling me what was going to happen next. It feels pretty weird, because you are lying there on your stomach and someone is messing with your boob FROM BELOW. It is hard to wrap one’s mind around it. And one ear is squashed, which makes it a little hard to hear, or makes it feel like it’s a little hard to hear.

There is a sort of mini mammogram machine underneath the table, so they arrange the breast into that, and then the machine squeezes—not as hard as during a mammogram, just a sort of firm grasp. The machine does imaging to make sure the breast is positioned correctly; they had to ungrasp and regrasp a few times to get things right.

I am hoping I am remembering to mention all the steps. They raised the table at some point, even higher than when I had to use a two-step stepstool to climb up onto it. It’s so the radiologist can sit UNDER the table to do the biopsy. This table-raising might have happened before the grasping/ungrasping/regrasping. (By the way: the radiologist mentioned that for people who CANNOT climb up onto the table or who would PREFER NOT TO, this procedure CAN be done with the patient seated. She said but most patients find it easier not to have to hold still in an upright position, and not to have to see the radiologist RIGHT THERE, and WITH THE NEEDLE, and so forth.)

Then the radiologist warned me she was going to clean the area, and there was a cold wet wiping sensation. Then she said she was going to do the numbing medication, and that there would be a pinch, and that I should NOT “rise up” but should instead “wiggle my feet.” Feet-wiggling was so distracting, I almost don’t remember how much the pinch hurt, but my memory is that it was less than a vaccination, but in that general range of pain: a little stab, but nothing that made me want to jump or gasp. Then she said she was going to do a second dose of numbing medication, but that I would probably feel it less than the first one, and that was correct: I still did feel something, but not much. A mosquito bite, a tiny sting.

Then the procedure itself began, and she warned me that the machine was going to make funny noises, and it did; I suggested it was the sound of trigonometry being done, because I was trying to impress her, but she said “What?” and then I had to repeat it. The noises were like…low-volume vacuuming noises, intermittent machine-running noises, cycling motor noises, that kind of thing. Nothing gross or scary, but I was glad she mentioned them. I could not FEEL much while this was happening. Sometimes I thought I felt Something, but nothing upsetting or painful—just, I could feel something happening in the breast region. At one point I felt a burning sensation inside the breast, but not painful, if that makes sense combined with the word “burning”: you know how if you take a perfectly-too-hot sip of tea/coffee/cocoa, there is a “burning” feeling in your throat but not ACTUALLY burning the way there is when you burn your tongue and you hate it? or if you get in a slightly-too-hot shower when you are chilly, it is a “burning” feeling but you are not actually yelping and turning it down? It was like that kind of burning: definitely I would use the word “burning,” but it did not hurt-hurt, it just caught my notice, like “Oh there is a burning sensation.”

Then it was done, and I don’t think this doctor and nurse had worked together much in the past, because there was a little bit of a dance about getting me out of the machine / up off the table. I am not certain, but I think the issue was that someone needed to apply pressure to the biopsy area the entire time I was (1) being extricated (i.e., as the mammogram machine was releasing its grip) and (2) extricating myself (i.e., as I was moving from lying on my stomach to sitting up), but there were not enough hands to do all the things, or rather not a coordinated/understood allocation of hands; and there was some concern that I would be pinched by part of the machine, but I was not. Anyway, it was managed: I was sitting up on the table, and the nurse was “applying compression”—that is, squeezing my breast hard between her hands, with a wad of gauze over the biopsy site. It’s not an everyday sort of thing to have happen, but she was so normal about it and that helped.

She had to keep squeezing for Quite Some Time. Five minutes? Something like that, possibly longer. Periodically she would peek under the gauze to check the bleeding. I don’t mind blood, so I looked too. There was more blood than I was expecting. When they said “needle biopsy,” I was picturing a needle like a vaccination needle, where sometimes there is a teensy little pinprick dot of blood. In this case I estimate there was half a teaspoon of blood involved total (and that’s only counting the times AFTER I was able to start looking); and the first two times she checked it, there was a sudden welling of blood about the diameter of a pea, maybe a little smaller. The diameter of a petite pea. It made me grateful I did not know beforehand (or afterhand) how big a biopsy needle is.

When the bleeding had mostly stopped, the radiologist applied two pieces of tape, and there was a word for the kind of tape but I have forgotten it. Steri-strips? Steri-tape? Something like that. [Update: I see the paperwork says “steristrips.”] She put them in an X shape over the area. The nurse then took me to have a “gentle” mammogram to make sure the little piece of titanium they put in there was in the right spot. (The radiologist called the titanium “internal breast bling,” and I could not love her more.) It was like a regular mammogram but much less squeezy, and they said the little piece of titanium was where it should be. (If it had NOT been where it should have been, there was no way to adjust it, but they would have noted the situation in my record to avoid confusion later on.)

The breast/skin area around the needle site looked a little deflated to me, but maybe I was imagining it. (I don’t think I’m imagining it. It looks a tiny bit caved in. Puckered.)

The nurse gave me a little (pink, everything breast-related is always pink) ice pack to put in my bra. It felt soothing and nice, but also it was a very hot day so I think it would have felt soothing/nice regardless. I may put ice packs in my bra every summer going forward. (The ice pack had adhesive to hold it in place, and I often get pink/itchy from adhesive, and it didn’t NEED adhesive because it could be tucked into the bra, and I DID get pink/itchy from the adhesive—so if there is a next time, next time I would ask them to skip the adhesive.

She asked me to rate the pain of the procedure on a scale of 1 to 10. I HAAAAATE those scales, and can’t believe how unscientific/subjective they are: dramatic people will say 10, it’s 10, MY SUFFERING IS ALWAYS A 10!! MAYBE A 12!! Careful anxious hand-wringing overthinkers will say “Well, 10 is supposed to be the worst pain I can possibly imagine, and I can imagine some really terrible pain like if I were shot multiple times or if I were being chewed on by an alligator or maybe I mean crocodile or maybe a shark would be worse, so I guess this excruciating, about-to-pass-out pain is probably a 4 or 5 compared to THAT.” Anyway, I told her the pain of the procedure was less than 1, about 1/2, and I feel good and non-hand-wringing about that assessment. Mayyyybe it was 1 at the worst, but I don’t think so. I think it was 1/2. Maybe less.

On the way home from the hospital, the numbing stuff started to wear off. I don’t know if everyone is like this, but when I get novocaine at the dentist office, as it wears off I get a fair amount of pain that seems to be THE PAIN OF THE NOVOCAINE DEPARTING, rather than THE PAIN THE NOVOCAINE WAS CLOAKING, if you see what I mean. That is, once the novocaine has fully worn off, I am not feeling that pain; it’s more like when a limb falls asleep and is waking up again, and you feel pain as it wakes up, but not after it is awakened. It’s one of the reasons I dread novocaine. Anyway it was like that: I felt an ache like novocaine wearing off. It was not VERY painful, but it was enough to make me want to stick my lower lip out and make a small self-pitying whining sound but not a SERIOUS one. I listened to soothing classical music, which I rarely do, but neither NPR nor my usual pop stations seemed right for the situation.

The ice-pack was small, and by the time I arrived home about 40 minutes later it was not cold. They’d mentioned it was reusable—but what to do while it is re-chilling? I am definitely saving it in case I ever have to have this done again, so that I can have one ice-pack in the bra and the other recharging. [Update: I put some frozen corn into a snack-sized ziplock baggie and tucked that into my bra, and swapped it with another snack-sized ziplock baggie of frozen corn each time it got uncold, and it was as good as or better than the ice pack they gave me, so I will just do that instead of indefinitely saving a used breast-care-center ice pack Just In Case.] I put the single ice-pack I had into the freezer, and I would say the sensation at the site of the biopsy could best be described as “stinging/aching.” Again, not terrible, not VERY painful—but stinging/aching. Putting the ice-pack back on awhile later was pleasant. The whole area feels Kind Of Sore—not agonizing, and I’m not flinching much if I accidentally touch/bump it, but I’m aware of it and it’s uncomfortable, and I am enjoying the cold of each fresh ice-pack.

There was a little bit of blood on my bra. They instructed me to wear a bra to the appointment, but I’d add that you should wear one you don’t mind getting a little bit of blood on. OLD bra. Old COMFY bra. They said I might want to wear the bra to bed tonight, to snug the owie part in and keep it from getting unexpectedly jostled. And I might. But I am someone who does not mind my bra, as opposed to someone who can’t wait to take it off each day, so your experience may vary.

I’m allowed to shower/bathe normally, but I am supposed to avoid washing the area of the biopsy, and I’m supposed to gently pat the area dry afterward. I am supposed to leave the special medical tape on until it falls off, or for four days, whichever comes first. (They said it will probably fall off after three days.) I am supposed to let them know if the area of the biopsy becomes hot/pink (infection). There is apparently a small chance of internal bleeding, which would leave a big swollen bruise but would be fine, and it would go away, it would just be icky/uncomfortable for a little while.

The radiologist will call me when she gets the results; she expects that to take two days, but says because today is Wednesday there’s a possibility the results won’t come in until after work Friday, in which case I wouldn’t hear from her until Monday.