New Breast Cancer Guidelines: :Yes! No! I Don't Know!

NEWS FLASH: Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care scores another good one in preventative medicine!

Listen, gals: you can forget about what your doctor has been telling you for the past 25 years.

You can forget about mammograms, unless you suddenly see an egg-sized lump poking out of your bra.

As a matter of fact, don't even look at the lump, because it's probably not there and will only cause you needless anxiety if it turns out to be nothing!

'Cause we all know women are anxious little chick-a-biddies who run around in circles if they think something will happen to their precious little boobies!

And we all know that 99 times out of 100, it's just nothing! They shouldn't worry about it! They shouldn't even go to the doctor, who won't do a breast exam on them anyway 'cause the Task Force has told them not to!

Well, all this new information has certainly clarified things for women, hasn't it? Personally, I feel a lot more secure in knowing the system isn't going to help me at all in the early detection of breast cancer. And it's such a relief to know I don't need to pay any attention to the state of my breasts, unless one of them turns blue or falls off or something.

SO. . . this wonderful task force has left women with so much freedom of choice, they now have THREE options they can follow in making their decision whether to pursue breast cancer screening, or just chuck it in the wastebasket where it belongs!

(Hint: only one of these three options is "right". We just put the other two in to make you feel like you have a little bit of control here, even if you don't.  OK, sweetheart? Now get back to your bloody rolling pin.)

Option A: YES!

Option B: NO!

Option C: I DON'T KNOW!

Now, who says this report doesn't clarify things? Repeat after me, the new Task Force Cheer:

Yes! No! I Don't Know!

Yes! No! I Don't Know!

YES!

I'm  still in favour of self-exams and mammograms, even if my doctor calls me a fussy little hypochondriac.

NO!

I'm not gonna touch those suckers any more! And now I won't have to put my tits in a waffle iron.

I DON'T KNOW!

I'm confused as hell. Should I leave them alone and just hope for the best?

It just gets worse, ladies. . .

YES!

NO!

I DON'T KNOW!

YES!

NO!

I DON'T KNOW!

And out of all this wonderful new information, we've come up with a brand new category which should fit everybody (not to mention make all our doctors happy!),  because we all know, don't we ladies, that one bra size fits all:

Let's pretend it isn't there. . .

and maybe it will go away!

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

The Munchkin Suicide Conspiracy: SOLVED!

Did I say I was finished posting about the bogus munchkin suicide scene in The Wizard of Oz? Did I? Well, I'm sorry but I lied. I found this video today and HAD to post it. This, folks, is truth. We may have been taken in; we may have let Satan lead us astray. But with the help of almighty YouTube, the truth has been revealed: yes, brothers and sisters! Let the munchkin speak!


http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Breast cancer: don't worry your pretty little head!

The Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care says self-examination of the breasts is of little utility. Photo credit: ©2011 Thinkstock

Breast-screening guidelines fuel firestorm


New guidelines for breast cancer screening that recommend women avoid routine mammography until age 50 are based on faulty methodology and will result in an "untold number of lives lost" if implemented across Canada, the Canadian Association of Radiologists charges.

The guidelines, released Monday by the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, recommend against routine mammography screening for most women age 40 to 49, arguing the "harms and costs of false-positive results, overdiagnosis and overtreatment" outweigh any "significant reductions in the relative risk of death from breast cancer".

Aimed at settling more than a decade of contentious debate over the recommended frequency and value of breast cancer screening, the guidelines also say that clinical breast exams and self-exams have no benefit and should never be undertaken, and urge that women over 50 only have mammograms every two to three years, instead every one or two.

But critics say the data on which the guidelines are based is dated.

The recommendation against routine screening of women under the age of 50 who are at average risk of developing breast cancer risk is self-admittedly "weak," and based on "essentially antiquated" and "unbalanced" evidence, argues Dr. Nancy Wadden, chair of the Canadian Association of Radiologist’s Mammography Accreditation Program and medical director of the breast screening program for Newfoundland and Labrador. "The task force looked at studies that were over 25 years old [involving] equipment that is outdated and not even available anymore. There's been enormous changes in breast imaging since that time, [and] in addition radiologists' interpretation skills have improved tremendously."

Part of the problem is that randomized control trials have only been conducted on analog mammography, "because digital hasn't been around long enough," adds Dr. Christine Wilson, medical director of the Screening Mammography Program at the British Columbia Cancer Agency.

Wadden contends that more recent observational and community studies indicate that there are "definite benefits" to screening younger women using digital mammography.

This is the kind of news report that makes my blood boil, triggering a sickened, terrified feeling that bubbles up from deep within.


The powers-that-be have once more muddied the waters in the realm of women's health care and disease prevention. Oh, and it won't be the first time! I'm old enough to remember the time - and this went on for years and years - when medical studies "proved" that hormone replacement therapy protected women from heart disease. In many cases it was prescribed to middle-aged and older women for that reason alone.


People listened to this without questioning it, doctors adopted it as policy, and all went merrily along, with uncounted women dropping dead from heart attacks due to "unknown" factors. Maybe heredity? Inability to handle stress? If doctors even looked at the fact that these women had been on estrogen for ten or fifteen years, they simply did not see it, demonstrating the bizarre blindness all too common in what passes for women's health care.

Then someone bothered to do a study. But it had to be halted in a hurry, because the women taking the estrogen were dying of heart disease at an alarming rate.



Yes, that's right. Dying.


Can a task force be wrong? Can studies be flawed? You bet they can. Already charges have been levelled that the data in this ludicrous study came from dinosaur technology, analog equipment that is now obsolete. We don't even watch TV like that any more, so why is it OK to do life-or-death studies the same way?

But what sets my brain on fire is the insistence that women should not go to their doctors for a routine breast exam at regular intervals unless there is raging breast cancer in their immediate families. And it gets worse. The breast self-exams that I've been told to do every month - yes, every month, not every two or three years - are now strongly discouraged on the grounds that it may lead to that horrific possibility, a "false positive".


This, the study insists, will only lead to unnecessary anxiety about nothing. We'll just worry our pretty little heads. We'll get all upset about losing a breast, like women do. If we think we feel a little lump, or for that matter a big one, we might (silly things!) become afraid we have cancer and be dead in a few months, then rush off to our doctors to get a professional opinion.


The answer? Don't do the self-exams.

For years and years (and years!), I felt infuriated about being badgered to DO the exams after every cycle.  Like most women, I felt tremendous guilt about forgetting to do them. The message seemed to be that the onus for early detection was on us. If we missed a lump, if one somehow turned up at our yearly checkup, well then. . .


The implication was that we could have done something about it much, much sooner if we'd only had the sense to know our own bodies.


That was back in the golden days of "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and the seizing of women's health care back from the patriarchy. But now I don't know what the hell is happening. It's as if I am being told NOT to know what is going on in my own body, in my own breast tissue, so I can tell what's normal and what isn't.


Why? The answer seems to be, it's better not to know. It only upsets us. We fret. We trot off to doctors. We even insist on mammograms, which have vague negative side effects that no one ever spells out.


Want to know the real reason?


Dollars.  It costs the medical system to give us those tests.

Never mind how much it costs us (though having a cancerous lump slowly and insidiously grow from barely perceptible to Stage 4 without our awareness might just cost us a little.) It costs the system to deal with these pesky little "false positives". I don't know how much; I don't have figures. But since this so-called study appears to be deeply flawed, yet is STILL being pushed at us as gospel, I feel a hidden agenda at work.



I've had bullshit statistics rammed down my throat for too long. Whenever the conclusions on women's health care suddenly lurch into reverse, I notice there is never an apology for the confusion and dismay and anger it causes. We're simply updating what "we" know.


Save me from this "we". It doesn't exist. "We" is Orwellian, a herd thinking that is always extremely dangerous because it is so often based on bias, not to mention bullshit. I honestly don't know how "statistics" like this can even be released, let alone  followed. Would you walk into Future Shop and try to buy an analog TV? Isn't breast cancer just a little more serious than that?

My worst fear is that next time a woman tries to book a mammogram, she won't be allowed to because she's considered too young, or not enough time has elapsed since the last one. Or perhaps doctors will begin to say, "No, I won't do a breast exam on you until you're over 50," leaving us to cope with that pea-sized lump we weren't even supposed to detect.



A breast exam at a doctor's office takes about a minute, maybe two. How much does that cost the system? If there's a "false positive" and the patient has to go for a mammogram and finds out there's nothing there, the result for her is immense relief. Why would the system want to take that away that peace of mind?


Ludicrous! The whole thng is ludicrous. And to me, it smacks of a not-so-subtle wrenching of control away from women and back to a medical system that has let us down time, after time, after time. Why does this bother us so much?  Why do we get all anxious and whiny and trot around doing "unnecessary" things to protect ourselves?



Because women die, that's why. They die. And we don't want to.

How often have I heard that most women find cancerous breast lumps themselves? I don`t have statistics rattling around in my head, but I`ve been hearing it for decades, quoted as an unassailable fact. If it`s true, and I believe it still is, how on earth can any study, anywhere, be so primitive, so flawed, so horribly disrespectful to women's wisdom and women's right to manage their own health care? Worse than that, how can the medical community blandly swallow it as accepted procedure?


I want an answer to one more question.

If all this disrespectful garbage becomes policy, which it may well do, how many small lumps will go undetected because we're really not supposed to touch ourselves there?



How many significant lumps won't be detected because our doctors will politely tell us they don't do breast exams any more until we are well past menopause?


How many deadly lumps will go undetected because our mammogram clinic will suddenly refuse our request for a screening test?  

To conclude, I can`t help but make the inevitable analogy to men's health care. My husband had a possible cancer scare a couple of years ago. Now, every six months, he goes in to see a specialist who does an uncomfortable manual test on him, just to make sure everything is still OK.


Applying the rules of this new study, he should not be going in because the exam might lead to a false positive, which could cause him "unnecessary anxiety" (read: which could take up the doctor's precious time). Instead, he's given the exam, mostly for his own peace of mind.

I hate this stuff, I really hate it. It stirs up fury in me. Fury because women are going to die from this, to actually die.  Even one death is too many, but my intuition (and haven't we been told for years to listen to our intuition?) tells me there will be many. It's the health care system instructing a woman to stick her head in the sand, because it's really better for everybody if she doesn't know.


But there are certain advantages to being dead, aren't there? The best one is, you can't complain.


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The Sister Wives exodus: a very costly publicity stunt

An obsession's an obsession, am I right? Remember the Dead Munchkin Hypothesis that lasted, I think, five posts? I promise this one won't run as long (though it keeps coming back for more).


I stumbled upon an article that opened my eyes, wide, about the reality show Sister Wives: you know, the one I keep blathering on about. Their much-publicized flight from Utah to avoid criminal prosecution for their "lifestyle" turns out to be more hype than reality.

I don't know what came first: their exodus from Eden to the Promised Land, or this report which claims they were never really under threat of prosecution in the first place.


"In new legal papers in their court case, the Browns are requesting that the law they’re being prosecuted under be dismissed. That probably won’t happen, but they probably won’t get prosecuted at all either. The prosecutors have mentioned that they are trying to get the case dismissed, since all of the wives have entered into it by their own free will and there isn’t any incest, underage marriage or tax or welfare fraud. So Kody uprooted everyone, took his kids out of their school, giving them three days notice (and telling them not to tell their friends goodbye), and hightailed it to Vegas, all based on his own paranoia. He could have just stayed put and ridden it out. At least he created a great new plot line for his reality show, right?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But is Kody Brown man enough to admit he made a huge, damaging mistake? What would happen if the family decided to return to  their megahouse in Utah? Nothing, probably, by the looks of it. But pride has a way of keeping people nailed in place.

At this point, it looks like nobody's happy with the move. The teenagers are so bitter and angry that I wonder if one of them isn't going to just plain bolt. You can't casually uproot a kid from this kind of exotic background: he won't find new friends readily, if at all. If the stigma of polygamy doesn't get him, the stigma of having a jackass father who flaunts his screwups on national TV will.

Like some bizarre latter-day (!) Brigham Young trailing a host of obedient wives and children, Kody has made all the decisions here, though as usual the wives pretend to be independent agents. The family seems to be on the verge of cracking apart. Polygamy for the most part must happen under glass: it's a bizarre way of life that makes most people profoundly uneasy. Outside the protective bubble, the spotlight can be pretty glaring.

Divorce won't happen, marital breakdown won't happen, but mental health breakdown is already taking place, and will only escalate. For all his patriarchal posturing, Kody Brown is about fifteen years old emotionally. He acts impulsively, not thinking how his dashing off to "my Plymouth Rock" (his grotesque name for Las Vegas) will affect the large circle of women and children whose security depends on him. Narcissism has a steep cost: but never to the narcissist, who inevitably hands off the damage to the vulnerable souls in his orbit.

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Peanut Butter Fritos: the Sister Wives Diet

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

1	cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
1	cup white sugar
1	cup peanut butter
1	large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides are up.
2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.
3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get too hard when it cools.
4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan. Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle over the top.

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

INGREDIENTS

saltine crackers
1	cup butter
1	cup sugar
1	package chocolate chips
1	cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.
2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.
3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

Meri's Caramel Corn

Meri's Caramel Corn

INGREDIENTS

1	cube butter
1	pound brown sugar (2 3/8 cup)
1	cup white corn syrup INGREDIENT NOTE"
1	Eagle® brand condensed milk
1	teaspoon vanilla
3	gallons popped corn

PREPARATION:

1. Cook butter, brown sugar and white corn syrup in a double boiler. Test periodically by dropping a small amount of batter into cold water. If batter can be formed into a firm ball in the cold water, it is finished cooking.
2. Add condensed milk and vanilla. Boil and pour over popped corn.

Ohhhhhh. . . kay. We might just be on to something here, the secret key as to why the four wives (oh, three: one of them is pregnant and usually thin anyway) have been having a teensy bit of trouble losing weight on Sister Wives.

Don't tell me I'm obsessed with Sister Wives, because I already know. I watch them as you'd watch a train wreck staged for public amusement. Most of you will know that this is a "reality" show which follows the adventures and peccadilloes of a fundamentalist Mormon family in a "plural" (polygamous) marriage. They have about a zillion kids and lots of money from unknown sources, which is why they could afford a massive house in Utah before the proverbial shit hit the fan.


The patriarch, a sort of middle-aged Beach Boy named Kody, is the only rooster in a henhouse initially made up of three wives: but soft! Do I see a fourth wife on the horizon, a much younger, much thinner wife, a rather submissive wife who cries at the drop of a hat?


A soon-to-be-pregnant wife?


Hurricane Robyn was nothing to what happened next. In one of many "duh" moments, the family was astounded to learn that authorities were doing an "investigation" of the family on the grounds that they were breaking the law. Then, oh boy, it was getting-out-of-Dodge time.

Though it seems to me highly unlikely that Kody would have been thrown in jail for something that is widely practiced in Utah (he was more likely being punished and held up for ridicule for appearing on television), he dragged his family out of their relative security and stability all the way to Las Vegas, which seems like the worst possible choice for so-called devout Mormons who won't even let their daughters wear tank tops to school.


The big thing now - there's always a big thing - is that the clan needs a source of income to pay for all the furniture-buying jags they're going on. On one episode they said they were going into real estate, but that rather vague plan seems to have been dropped in favour of something way more hip: opening their own gym.

The gals have been making an attempt to lose weight and get in shape. Though the cameras played this down at first, it's obvious all of them except Robyn are seriously obese, well over 200 pounds.
Janelle easily qualifies as morbidly obese.


It's funny to watch them working out with a hunky male trainer for two months, then getting on the scale and being puzzled to see that they've only lost 2 or 3 pounds. When I looked up the Sister Wives recipe book, the mystery was revealed. Though the examples posted here are, I guess, meant for 20 people, a pound of sugar in a single recipe seems extreme. Even main dishes are heavily based on refined carbohydrates, with not much mention of fruits or vegetables. I didn't have space enough for the Mock Tapioca (and surely tapioca itself is "mock" enough), made mostly of Cream of Wheat. I've always thought of that as a post-op food, sort of like the lime jello they give you the day after surgery.

It amazes me that five adults responsible for a huge gaggle of kids can be so irresonsible as to think they can support themselves with this kind of venture. It just doesn't make sense. All the wives seem stressed, with Christine, the supposedly level-headed one, "confessing" that she had been on antidepressants, hastily adding that she was "half off them", to be warmly applauded by Janelle (and do not get me started on "friends" encouraging you to go off your medication! Only your doctor knows for sure.)


Meri is cracking up, obviously, and headed for something pretty dire. Janelle hides behind obesity and blandness, her eyes disturbingly blank. Robyn, well. . .Robyn has already had her baby in "real time", little Solomon Brown (a worse name even than Truely, the name of that bald-headed baby who still looks like a space alien after 18 months).

The more the Meri-er, I suppose, until the money runs out.  But with TLC footing the bill, maybe that won't happen. So Solomon may have a little brother or sister by-and-by, springing from Kody's hyperactive Latter-Day loins.

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What once was magical

I've been looking for the YouTube vid of this ad for over a year: it was on last year, and I was delighted to see it again. There's just something about the jingly, festive music (which is, by the way, written by Frederick Delius: Three Small Tone Poems, with this movement usually called Sleigh Ride, sometimes Winter Night: I looked it up!). The cookies and ornaments coming to life (and the snowman!) are enchanting, though, surprisingly to me, some people find them creepy.

I have trouble with Christmas, specifically what the culture has done with it. It's shark-infested waters now, one massive greed-driven buy-a-thon, and often not much else. We are really trying to pare it down, in part because Bill is retiring in the spring and we won't have much money, and it's going to happen in stages. We want to buy gifts ONLY for the grandchildren, with perhaps the adults getting a charitable donation in their name (which is something I would love to "get" - imagine giving someone the opportunity to give for Christmas!). Even with the grandkids, we want to start paying for things they can do, activities like horseback riding and crafts, rather than "stuff" that they will soon get tired of, leaving their parents to try to Craigslist it so there's room to turn around.

I remember, and this gave me a chill, someone going on the radio, an expert on traditions, and the interviewer said, "So! How did this Christmas thing get started?" At the time I was quite a devout Christian, and my jaw dropped. No longer do we celebrate "Christ" - mas, unless we're fanatics of some sort, those nuts who go to church on Christmas Eve. No one seems to remember that - traditionally, at least - a baby was born of Mary in Bethlehem, and THAT is how it all got started: the gift-giving originates with the Magi from the East (Magi being the root word for "magic").

When I was a kid, everyone seemed to have what we called a "manger scene", and we had one imported from Europe that was the talk of the neighborhood: the figures were 8 or 9 inches tall, the manger was backlit, and the camel so scrumptious I craved it to play with. Yes, there was and is lots of phony/superficial Christianity (I call it "Christian-ism"), in which church is mainly a gabfest and an opportunity for frantic baking and other jolly fundraisers so the church can have a brand new plush carpet. People stand around and eat things loaded with fat and sugar and starch and yak about their new car or whatever. Talking about your faith is awkward and seldom done. It's somehow an embarrassment. Church for the most part has become an old pair of shoes, or perhaps tattered slippers we can slip our feet into with total comfort because we know exactly what to expect.

I miss the feeling of wonder, I mean the wonder beyond cookies coming to life: the sense of holiness, which now makes me feel like a schmuck who didn't know how to do it right. I used to shed tears while taking communion, and I know that people gossiped about me and called me names that weren't very flattering (because I overheard it more than once, though they pretended they weren't doing it). At the same time, we were encouraged to "feel" the service, to have some sort of numinous experience.

People washed up on shore, usually people in the midst of personal crisis, and they almost always disappeared as soon as the crisis was averted. For them, the church was a safe, comforting womb. For me, it slowly became a tomb, a dry hole where I could no longer seek the living water that was too far below surface to access.

I needed water from the rock, but somehow or other I was considered a bit of a nut case to actually pursue it. I didn't want to make brownies or Nanaimo bars or serve on committies, which was the "proper" was to contribute to "worship" (a term I now associate with a kind of idolatry, throwing yourself on the ground and begging for mercy - and believe me, no one did THAT in that place). The few times I did try to serve on "teams" (which was the new, hip name for committees), I was pretty much told what to believe.

Anyway. . . I started with Christmas, didn't I? And I ended up here. I didn't decide one day, "gee, I think I will walk away from everything meaningful in my life after 15 years". It was more like, "I think I've had enough." There was no one, not ONE person I could talk to about this, as it just made me look like a traitor. I scrambled around with it for several years, alone and despairing, and one day (I didn't even realize it at the time!), I walked.

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The worst (worst, worst) product name EVER

(OK, if you don't believe me about the product described below, I've seen them. They made my jaw drop. I saw them in a drug store, so I assumed they were for medicinal use only.  I didn't buy any (didn't think I could chew them) and forgot about it until I saw this article by Campbell Webster, which kind of says it all. The post-script is an ad for a related product which is probably just about as palatable.)

Last week, a bag of cookies caught me by surprise. This may seem unusual, especially considering the location was a Charlottetown grocery box store, where the most startling sight might be someone you haven't seen in a while, and you would prefer to keep it that way. Large grocery stores have been planned with the accuracy of a large-scale military invasion: their layout is designed to comfort and entice, lulling you into overconsumption. Shock is not the goal.

Still, not all plans are perfect, proof positive being the huge bags of cookies for sale, under the brand name, 'Bowel Buddy'. As you may have guessed, the Bowel Buddy cookie brand is particularly high in fibre, and therefore promises to keep your bowel moving at a pretty good clip. (An unusual need, it seems, at least taken from my three-month-old son's viewpoint, who needs no such buddy at any time of day or night).

(Editor's note. Notice subtitle: "Snack on the GO and get regular!" Yum.)

What is startling about the Bowel Buddy is that we usually don't name our foods after their last stop in our bodies; sewage being something that in many ways is the anti-thesis of food. Even more amazing is that somebody had to come up with this name, or perhaps a few people, on salary no less, delivering this brand name to the market. It stimulates the imagination, this stimulating cookie, as to how the cookie company settled on a name which is the marriage of friendship with an excrement organ.

"Marketing! Get in here! We've got a heck of a new cookie! It'll clean you out faster than a truckload of raisin bran. Need a name by Monday!"

And so the naming process may have begun, begging the question: What names finished out of the top spot? Rectal Recess? Anal Allies? Sphincter Sojourn? And did somebody shout, "Eureka!" or "Bingo - Bowel Buddy!" when the winning name for the cleaning cookie was declared?

Health claims for foods is, of course, a heated battlefield, with aisle after aisle of packaged foods screaming their benefits to your longevity, energy levels etc. Accordingly, the pursuit of your dollar can be as much about the name and the claim of the food as it is about the food itself. As a result, truth is constantly endangered with amazing product claims like Campbell's Soup products claiming to have "25 per cent less sodium". This is an accurate statement, except that it is still a very high amount of sodium, and might as well say, "25 per cent less sodium . . . than the Dead Sea."

Government regulatory bodies attempt to assist us by forcing manufacturers to be accurate in their naming strategies, leading to products such as 'grated cheese flavoured product' and 'real juice-flavoured beverage' (i.e. no cheese or juice is involved in either product.) Painfully awkward descriptions such as these no doubt sends cookie companies and other food manufacturers to break the mold, and come up with branding like the Bowel Buddy, which just seems ridiculous, and even likely to repel consumers.

Or will it? I bought two bags.

Campbell Webster is a writer and producer of entertainment events. He can be reached at campbell@campbellwebster.ca

Whinny Wafer
Homemade Horse Cookies

www.WhinnyWafers.webs.com
Making homemade horse cookies, with no preservatives, or any of those items we can't pronounce

All cookies will be cooked and ready to mail to your location
Taking bulk orders as well.
 
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You seem fine to me

I don't know when I first heard this thing, but it was probably when I was six years old and fell down in the playground and banged my knee so hard I could barely walk. Trying not to cry, I walked as normally as I could into the nurse's office. The nurse was smoking a cigarette and flipping through movie magazines.


"Whatsammater, sweetheart?" she wheezed. I almost fell through my facade of control at the "sweetheart", for no one had ever used a term of endearment on me

“I uh. . . I uh. . .” I held up the knee in question. It wasn’t bloody or bruised, or at least wouldn’t turn black-and-blue until the next day.

Then came the words I would hear for the rest of my existence.

“You seem fine to me.”

She didn’t send me home or even put on a bandaid, but pushed me back out into the playground. I walked normally until I hit the door, then staggered and limped ‘til the end of the day. Then my mother looked at me and said,

“Why didn’t you ask go to home? When are you going to learn?”

That was the first of many.

I won’t list them all because I’d be here all day. Doctor, I feel like I’m sinking into a depression. A close look, narrowed eyes, then the verdict.

“You seem fine to me.”

Doctor, I have this excruciating abdominal pain that won’t go away. It’s over here in the –

“You seem fine to me.”

I have this thing, have always had it, and I have had it so long and practiced it so well that I don’t even know I’m doing it. The mask comes up, a cool, blank mask like Mr. Sardonicus, with God-knows-what distress and anguish lurking behind it.

How did this happen? Oh, guess.

I had a friend once, and he died. The friendship lasted about three months, until he was no longer able to put a coherent sentence together. We would get together at Starbucks – both of us were wrangling problems so massive, I can’t even begin to outline them here.

“Well, Margaret, I went to the doctor yesterday. Know what he said?”

“I just can’t guess.”

“He said – “

“Don’t tell me - let me guess - "

"YSFTM!”

“Yes!” Then we would both dissolve in howls of laughter – or maybe they were just howls.

“What do they expect you to do, anyway? Stagger in there like the Hunchback of Notre Dame?”

“Yes, except that they’d probably accuse you of malingering.”

Peter’s telescoping of that awful refrain into a set of initials started something. YSFTM began to take on a significance far greater than LOL, WTF, OMG, or, for that matter, SNAFU or LSMFT (hint: it has something to do with cigarettes).

So if I have a disappointment and my mood drops into my shoes, and I meet somebody who has known me for years and years, this is what I hear:

“YSFTM.”

It even happened at the gastroenterologist’s (is that how it’s spelled?) who was supposed to do a bunch of x-rays of my insides. I told her I was having heart symptoms – or, at least, that’s how I interpreted the crushing pain in my chest, numbness in my left arm and thundering, unstable heartbeat I was experiencing several times a day. (My doctor claimed I had an irritated esophagus.)

She looked me up and down. She sort of turned me this way and that. She almost patted my cheek.

Then she said it.

“YSFTM.”

Whenever I see those programs on TV about Your Health, they say that women having even the mildest heart symptoms should rush to their doctors immediately. OK, probably they’ll be able to do it without feeling like a total idiot because they don’t have the smooth white waxy Mr. Sardonicus mask that automatically ascends to cover me when I am in any kind of distress.

You may say, well then, just remove the mask. It’s like saying just remove every fingernail at the cuticle. Go on, just do it.

And that’s another one – perhaps I should save this for another post – the “just” syndrome. Just get over it. Just stop thinking about it. Just pull yourself together, just snap out of it.

This is allied with an even worse one, said in an edgy, judgemental tone:

“Can’t you just. . .”

Can’t you just, for God’s sake, stop wasting my time when it’s obvious that nothing is wrong with you except self-absorption?

Can’t you just do the most obvious thing to help yourself, like take a walk? (when I’ve been walking an hour a day for 25 years).

Can’t you just count your blessings instead of sheep?

There’s nothing I can do about this. It’s a defense built when I was maybe two or three years old and first discovered that I was not in a hospitable environment and never would be.



I had to hide myself, from myself. And thus I fooled the world. But there were exceptions: the time I burst into tears in the specialist’s office and was given one of those mild downers that women used to eat like candy. And then marks on my chart indicating empty histrionics.

“It’s not that I’m calling you a malingerer,” one doctor said. Oh, no, not at all. But who brought the subject up, me or you? It’s about as helpful and supportive as “Not that I think you’re ugly.” Then defending it with, “I was only trying to help you! Constructive criticism, you know.  You’re a writer, you’ve had lots of rejections, I thought you’d be used to it by now.”

Besides, they weren’t really saying it, were they?

I wonder if this is just a continuation of yesterday’s “mood”. But I have wanted to write about YSFTM for a long time now. I guess I’m not supposed to reveal myself as being this vulnerable.

Or this invincible.


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I don't want to do SQUAT today

I don't want to do SQUAT today.  Everything seems pointless. I try to walk and find I'm on a treadmill rapidly moving backwards. I don't want to leave my chair. I don't want to put away the dishes, thank you very much, or clean the birdcage. I don't. I don't want to check the mailbox, with that creak when you open up the top, and find rejection letters, more rejection letters. I don't want to sit here and diddle. I don't want to think about Christmas. I don't want to think about Christmas with dread. I don't want to think about how Christmas has been ruined. I don't want to think about the fact that my blog tells me I've had 30,000 views in a year, when I only get 2 views a day. Obviously it can't do math. I don't want to go take a shower. I don't want to feel like this. I want some hope. I don't want to feel this alone. I don't want to stare out at my cedar boughs and see rusty, brown, dead growth. I don't want to hand back a review copy to my editor because I don't goddamn understand the book, or perhaps it's because I loathe it. I don't want to see a writer win every award in the book after my rapturous review of his novel. I don't want to keep handing the lifeline to the next person, and the next person, and the next person, until I drown. I don't want to think about the future. I don't want to think about my grandchildren getting older and not wanting to be seen with me. I don't want to think about how they will soon see through me, and therefore probably stop loving me. I don't want to think about how the best moments in my life flew by so fast that I didn't even notice, and can only be longed for in retrospect. I don't want to sit here. I don't want to not sit here. I don't want to think about positive thinking and all that crap, I hate it. I don't want to be accused of being "negative" even though I know I AM "negative". I don't want to feel that my whole life has somehow been a miss. It went wide and I don't know why and I can't retrieve it. I don't want to realize how late it is for certain things and how I will probably never achieve them now. I don't want to think about my dream slipping through my fingers like a nasty little bar of soap. I don't want to think about something awful happening to my loved ones. Being widowed. Not wanting to live any more. Living thirty more years alone. I dont want to think about the sense of living in a void where no one hears me. I don't want to think about publishing this and having one or two people (or maybe zero!) read it and think I am a loser and/or haven't tried hard enough. I don't want it to be Thursday. I don't want it to be today.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

You've got to hear this to believe it

We had to devote at least one post to the incredible Florence Foster Jenkins, a performer so godawful as to reach the realm of the sublime.

The legend is that she truly believed she was a great and gifted singer. Certainly she had a loyal following and once even played Carnegie Hall. Her devoted accompanist, a man with the astonishing name of Cosme McMoon, would sometimes make faces behind her back as she sang, thereby explaining to her why so many people were laughing.

Only a few recordings of Jenkins (whose real first name was Narcissa) still exist, probably because she was boycotted by every record company in the country. Jenkins albums are always padded out with a few other awful singers, no doubt her friends. My theory on how she got recorded: someone melted down an old record, then ran around and around and around it with a needle. No doubt this primitive technology improved her sound.

Oh, it's just astonishing when I listen to this, for every time it seems to get worse!


http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Thomas Burns sings Salut! Demeure Chaste et Pure

In contrast to the excruciating Florence Foster Jenkins, here is a man who truly can sing.

At least, one person thought so.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm