Checking the margins

As I sat in the waiting room last month waiting for my every 3 month breast check ( I am right in the peak of the period when recurrences might occur), I was reading UM's cancer center research news. No more second surgeries for lumpectomies!!! Back in the olden days (October 2008!!!), they would remove the lump plus an extra cm on all sides. Within the next couple of days, pathologists examine this hunk o'flesh and see how close the cancer cells come to the edges; 30% of the time the cancer cells are too close necessitating a rescission. Lucky me! I needed a second surgery with hints of a third. But now apparently, the pathologists check the margins right when you are open to the world and make a decision whether to cut more. This makes sense. Too bad they didn't think of this before.

Someone last week asked me who my surgeon was. I could not remember it for the life of me though her earnest face came quickly to mind. The name popped in my head several days later. I really have a hard time with names and dates. I forgot a dear friend's birthday remembering it too late, a day later.

I am still having trouble keeping asleep ( no trouble falling asleep). I worry about the dumbest things. Last night I dreamt that Naomi lived in a thatched cottage and wasn't taking proper precautions against the roof catching on fire. It took a while to tell myself that although her complex has caught on fire twice in the last few months (once a clear case of arson), her thatched roof was not a problem. I read for a while, fall in and out of sleep, wake briefly when the high school bus picks up kids at 6:48 am in front of my house and awake for good to the sound of the special bus at 7:24 that picks up the 'miracle baby' (as per her mother) across the street to take her to the middle school. It makes much more noise. The baby was born at the same gestational age as Naomi's baby is now to a mom who is probably my age now. She is unable to walk at age 12.
Naomi goes in for her 2nd ultrasound tomorrow on her birthday so maybe we'll have a better idea about the sex other than '65% boy'. The official reason is that her uterus is growing faster than anticipated. I have warned Naomi ahead of time that just because they might find a baby the size of a 30 week old fetus, it probably is younger. She hasn't inherited much from me but I am guessing the ability to grow a big baby might be one thing she has. Since she has little bodyfat, it isn't difficult to see its outline sometimes. In that picture I posted last week, the lump to the side is the baby.
It is supposed to be 60 degrees today but the temperature is hovering in the low 20s. They measure it in a low spot 10 miles away from here so I suspect it's much warmer. A good day for a run.