Six days until our home visit!

I really didn't mean for almost an entire week to pass between blog entries.   This past week has been a busy and productive one, and I finally have time now to sit and write about it!

I suppose the big news is that we all had our physicals and have all been given clean bills of health!  So all that's left to do is tidy up the house, make some copies, and wait anxiously and patiently for Thursday.

Actually, the REALLY big news isn't directly related to the adoption process, but I'll share it anyway because it could have been.  At my physical on Tuesday morning, my doctor found a lump in one of my breasts.  I diligently perform my SBE (self-breast exam) every month or so and hadn't found anything, so it came as a bit of a surprise to me.  My doctor is awesome and quickly ordered diagnostic testing as soon as finding said lump, pretty much in the same breath.  Thus, on Wednesday, I had the milestone experience of having my first mammogram.  The long story short (and old news if you're friends with me on Facebook) is that no masses were found on the mammogram or the two ultrasounds I had immediately afterward -- Praise God from whom all blessings flow!!!  One of the perks of not having a uterus anymore is that I don't menstruate anymore, and therefore I don't really ever know where I am in the cycle.  That's not entirely true; sometimes I can tell, because having a hysterectomy might take away menstruation but it doesn't [necessarily] take away PMS!  (At least not if it's a partial hysterectomy like mine and the woman retains one or both of her ovaries.)  Anyway, it is completely normal for women to have cysts in their breasts that come and go depending on where they are in their cycles, and that is apparently what my deal was this time.

But that's another reason why I haven't posted any entries this week.  After my physical was over, I was slightly irritated because my doctor wouldn't sign my health report until she had the results of the scans.  I was obsessed focused on the fact that without her signature, the health report wouldn't be complete and it would hold up the adoption process.  Typical me -- I knew in my heart of hearts that if the worst should happen and there was any kind of malignancy, the resulting effect of having to put the adoption process on hold would be among the least of my concerns.  I honestly wasn't scared for my own sake until Wednesday morning, for the short period of time immediately after my mammogram and before I could get down to ultrasound.  I'd asked the techs who did my mammo if they could see anything suspicious (one of the benefits of doctoring where I work -- I know that techs aren't the ones that do the official diagnosing, but I also know that they know darn good and well what they're looking at, and was hoping to be able to gain some inside information by playing the Co-Worker card!) and the one looked at the other and the quickly back to me and said, "The radiologist will have to look at these and then she'll come talk to you."  THAT is when my heart sank, and I was convinced that it was serious.  For about ten minutes, I sat in the room with the mammogram machine, gowned from the waist up, waiting for what seemed like an eternity for the results.  It got to where I couldn't even look at the nice, pretty poster in front of me because it was for the breast cancer awareness postage stamps, and I felt like those two words were bearing down on me and pushing me down with their weight.  I was mentally sorting out who I would have to go home and call, and what I would say.  "So this is how it's going to be, eh?" I thought to myself.  I silently prayed the Lord's Prayer a few times and tried to focus on "staying strong" like everyone always says to do in grave situations.

And finally, one of the techs came back in the room and said, "The radiologist didn't find anything, so she wants to do any ultrasound to take a closer look."  I breathed a huge sigh of relief, but was still confused; what did she mean by that, "didn't find anything"?  My doctor had said that there was a 3.5cm mass; something that size definitely should have shown up on the mammogram!  I know they had me squeezed in there good and tight . . . maybe she just meant "didn't find anything suspicious".  I quickly convinced myself that it wasn't reassuring news, because if it didn't show up on the mammo then it must have been really deep, or something, and would be even harder to remove.  I handled the whole psychological recoil of having my uterus removed without harboring any ideas that my womanhood was somehow threatened because I no longer possessed one of the gold standard hallmarks of femaleness.  In other words, I don't feel like "less" of a woman because I don't have uterus and am infertile.  But I wasn't so sure that I could muster up the same healthy dose of auto-identity if I had to have a mastectomy.  Those are the thoughts that were going through my head as I waited another eternity five minutes until the ultrasound room was available.

Obviously, as you know since I started with the end of the story, those were all moot points.  I don't need to make "that call" to anyone, our adoption process remains on track, and I don't have to worry about whether to get implants or a prosthetic.  The "girls" are fine and not going anywhere without me anytime soon.  And again I say, Praise the Lord!!  And also give thanks for the many people who were also praying for me during that time.

DH, DS and I went to the MN State Fair yesterday.  I joked that it could very well be our last trip to the Fair without a stroller for another few years, and we all shared a good laugh.  (I suspect DS' laugh was more of a "going with the flow" amusement, since he hasn't had the pleasure (?) of maneuvering a stroller through traffic yet.)  We joked that we're totally going to get a side-by-side double stroller, because they are such crowd-friendly vehicles -- and even if we only have one baby, we can use the other side for all our stuff!  (We learned that lesson quickly when DS was a baby, only the double stroller we'd somehow inherited was double the length instead of width.)  We pointed out the different options for baby carriers and mused about what kind we thought would be best.  Then we pondered the effects of wearing a baby on our nearly-40-year-old backs, and quickly changed the subject.  I made a mental note to find some good strengthening exercises for my lower back.  :)

The rest of the weekend, I plan on spending puttering around the house and finishing up some decluttering projects.  I can't believe our home visit is this week!!!  I'll try not to wait another week before posting again. :)  Until next time . . .