All the while, I was scanning passers-by and wondering which one I would ask to help me if it got to the point where I HAD to have help.   None of them looked like good candidates.   Too young or too old or too angry-looking and then I thought, Well, that’s fine because really what could they do to help me?  I’ll probably die anyway, clutching my lung chunk and a bag of jellybellies left over from Valentine’s Day.   I guess I was driving too slowly because the car behind me began honking and veered around me in an alarming way because OH I’M SORRY TO HOLD YOU UP BY SLOWING DOWN WHILE I CHOKE TO MY DEATH ON A COCONUT FLAVOURED JELLY BELLY.  MY BAD.

But!

I didn’t die!  So that’s the good news part of this story.   The bad news is that I coughed so hard that my back went into spasm.   The really good news is that I can cough so hard that my back goes into spasm AND not wet myself!  Which means that I have awesome bladder control, which is actually true in multiple ways.   When I choked on the jellybean, I was on my way to see Dr. Jon Stewart, my gynecologist.   For reasons that I won’t totally disgust you with, I had to undergo bladder testing to see exactly how awesome I was at holding urine and as it turns out I have “exceptional” bladder control.   Exceptional!   (I’m going to find someway to work that into my biography because honestly, I have very few boxes on my report card that are marked “exceptional”.)

In a semi-related-but-not-really-train-of-thought, I will also say that the last person you want to run into out-of-context is your gynecologist, who I bumped into in the school corridor that very same morning.  I like my gynecologist just fine, but that’s just awkward.   When he says, “How are you?”, I assume he’s asking, “How is your vagina?” Even when he’s not.   He’s nice enough and he looks like Jon Stewart, so while he’s talking I’m always narrating the scene in my head and filling in with things like, “Jon Stewart looked concerned when I asked him about risks of bladder-knicking during surgery.   Jon Stewart assured me that in 2000 operations, he had knicked only two bladders himself.”

One day I will accidentally call him Jon Stewart and we’ll both be embarrassed, but for now I have “exceptional” bladder control AND I didn’t die choking on a jellybean on my way to the gynecologist.   So.

I drove away from the gynecologist, proud of my exceptional bladder and reassured by Jon Stewart about bladder knicking, and as I turned the corner, an elderly lady on the sidewalk tripped and fell in such a dramatic fashion that I actually just left my car in traffic and leaped out to rescue her, which mostly involved pressing tissues on all her bleeding spots, which were many.   As I sat on the sidewalk (with a couple of other passersby) holding the bleeding hand of this tiny, frightened lady, I had one of those moments filled with angst about the passage of time and about how fragile we all are (or become) and how one fall can really really really actually ruin your life when you are 81 and have just walked up the street with a pushcart so you can get milk and the big box of cereal for your husband who is the frail one in your relationship.   Only now YOU are being loaded into the back of an ambulance and suddenly maybe if luck isn’t with you, YOU are now the frail one and your frail husband will have to take care of you.   I weep.   I do.   It’s too much sometimes when I think about how fast life just goes by and how we start so frail and dependant and end that way, too, and in the middle we are meant to know what to do but mostly all we know how to do is apply pressure to bleeding and hope for the best.

Somehow I thought this anecdote was going to dovetail into my story about choking on the jellybean and not wanting to ask for help but actually it didn’t, so really it’s just two disparate events that happened to me yesterday and I think the takeaway for all of us is that I HAVE EXCEPTIONAL BLADDER CONTROL.

Well, I bought The Bun this cool science book that he is far far too young for because he was so excited about it that it was impossible to say, “No, I will not spend an extra $10 on an educational opportunity to expand your young horizons!”  (New total:  $60).   Then I bought The Birdy a new dress.   The Birdy is TWO YEARS OLD but man oh man, kid knows what she wants, and in this case, what she wanted was a Laura Ashley spring dress.   I could have said “No”.  Indeed, I DID say “No.”   But that didn’t work out.   It was buy her the dress or let her scream the store down and disallow me from buying all the other things I suddenly wanted/needed to purchase.   Add the dress.   (New total:  $75).

Did I mention that when I woke up yesterday, I reached over to hug The Bun awake and something in my neck went CRUNCH.   I’m not even kidding, it sounded like there was granola in there and a guy with heavy boots who was into that dance style that we like to call stomping, because that is what it’s called.   And CRUNCH.   It was the most painful CRUNCH in the history of all CRUNCHES.   I screamed in pain, which terrified The Bun (but also woke him up, which was good, because we were running late, just like every other morning) and then spent a good ten minutes painfully hoisting myself out of bed while cursing in a child-friendly way under my breath.   The pain was so horrific that by the time I got to Costco, I could only point my head straight forward, except it wasn’t even straight, it was on an angle that I believed was straight but really just made my look like a mystified cocker spaniel.   As a result, it became necessary to purchase a really really big bottle of Tyelenol (new total:  $91).   It’s like shopping for food when you’re hungry.   Don’t do it!

Also, I was hungry.   Add flax bread, Laughing Cow cheese, gallons of grape juice, a lasagne, and a rack of ribs.   Stop at the book table, buy a copy of “Ivy & Bean” because it’s cute.   Mr. Spuddle needs underwear.   Check.   Trail mix is good!   Add that.   And kids need vitamins, right?   Snap.  NEW TOTAL:  $250.   I didn’t even buy yoga pants, which are my normal Costco Impulse Buy.

Le.

Sigh.

Seriously, we’re in trouble with The Birdy.  The girl LOVES her dresses.   She is more passionate about dresses than I am.  On the plus side, I just made $250 selling her outgrown stuff on consignment.   So it’s sort of like her passion for dresses is making me money!   Except not really.   I KNOW.    I’m kidding.

I promised you lumps so I will now make a completely bumpy (ha ha!) transition into the ongoing story of the LUMPZ.   On Thursday, I went in for an ultrasound.   I realize that this will sound demented but when my doctor told me that I had to have an ultrasound I asked neither obvious question:  1.   On what part of my body?  Or 2.  Why?   So no, I do not know what the ultrasound was meant to prove or not prove, but I am diligent in following instructions as though following the instructions will prevent me from getting the thing that we are trying to prove that I do not have by doing seventy-eighteen tests.

The instruction for the ultrasound was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO EAT OR DRINK PAST MIDNIGHT ON WEDNESDAY UNTIL AFTER THE TEST.   The test was at 11:35.   By 8 am, I was crying because I was so desperate for coffee.   By 9, I was snappish.   By 10, I was downright nasty.   By 11, I was in the car because damn it, maybe if I was early, they would do the thing early and I could go downstairs to Starbucks and gulp down a venti shot of espresso.    I arrived at 11:05.   They were not busy.  In fact, they were not doing anything but leaning on counters talking to each other.   They politely told me to have a seat as though I was a reasonable, coffee-sated person who wanted to sit and read McLean’s magazine from 1989 for 35 minutes.

They proceeded to chat amongst themselves.   THEY COULD HAVE DONE THE TEST!  THEY COULD HAVE!  BUT THEY DID NOT!   By the time I got into the room (11:40), I was in hardly any mood to undertake my usual program of trying to amuse the technician into giving me a better diagnosis, but I was willing to try.    She was not willing to talk.   In fact, she never once looked at my face or addressed me directly.   ALL she said the entire time was, “HOLD YOUR BREATH” and then, about eleventy-hundred seconds later, “Relax.”   “ONE MORE TIME, HOLD YOUR BREATH” – long pause longer than is possible to hold breath for – “relax.”  It would have been boring if it wasn’t so painful and it was painful.   Let me tell you, I have had more than my share of ultrasounds, but these have all been while knocked up.   When you have a baby-related ultrasound, it’s all soft music and warmed gel.   When you have a non-baby related ultrasound, it’s barked orders and ice cold gel squirted on you like bleach cleaner into a toilet.   Then, at the end, she grabbed two of those hospital quality cardboard like brown paper towel things and swabbed at the goo like I was a countertop and she was a sullen, adolescent fast food worker who had just been told his work station was unsanitary.   Then she said, “OK, you go.”   EXCEPT I COULDN’T GO.   Because she was in the way.   The table was up against the wall, the machine was on the other side, and then there was her.  In order to “GO”, I had to crawl up to the end of the table, climb off and clamber over the machine.   Which I did because, damn it, I needed coffee.

And she said NOT ONE SINGLE WORD.

So I don’t know, still, what the ultrasound was for, or what it found because she gave nothing away, no expression of shock and sympathy or even one of outright boredom, just no expression at all.   I’ll find out next week and will advise you right away or some time near then depending on the news and whether it is good or bad.

Then I had coffee.   SO SO SO MUCH COFFEE.   Which gave me heartburn and possibly kidney stones, but did not relieve the GIANT SKULL-CRUSHING HEADACHE.

In my head, that was a much funnier story than it really is because the end of the story is that I’ve now had the headache that the lack of caffeine caused for three days or maybe THIS headache is to do with the neck stomp crunch thing or I don’t know, maybe I’ll just stop typing now.   Why not?   I have other stuff to do!  I am busy!  And important!*

Pass the Tylenol, please.

*Hilarious “Rules” reference which is only funny to me.

Oh, I forgot a bit that I was going to mention about when I was in the waiting room waiting for the lumpz to be investigated, I was reading a book that I brought with me, having exhausted the waiting room’s supply of ONE MAGAZINE.   The book was Maureen Johnson’s The Bermudez Triangle which caused a bunch of controversy because some librarians in schools banned it due to the fact that it has (gasp!) LESBIAN TEENAGERS.   The horror!  The horror!   Only wait, isn’t it 2010?   Are people really BANNING books based on the gay still?   Yes?   I find that really depressing.

Anyway, an old woman came into the waiting room and plopped herself down next to me and struck up a conversation by looking at the book in my hand and gasping, “WHAT A HUGE BOOK!”  I knew that her next question was going to be “What is it about?” and honestly I was pretty geared up for having a conversation about gay teenagers with an elderly woman, but she surprised me by saying, “I READ A BOOK ONCE!”  I don’t know which part of it surprised me most, the way she was shouting right in my face while I was trying to read, or the word ONCE.   So I said, “Oh!”  Which is writer-speak for, “Seriously?  ONCE?  If people like YOU who read ONE BOOK in your ENTIRE LIFE take over the planet, then my job will go the way of the dinosaurs and I will die penniless and alone!”   She went on, “It was 1945!   I was on a cruise on the Panama Canal!  It was a very slow cruise!   Very boring!  So I READ A BOOK!”   She was so happy about it and I was so aghast that what I did was to go back to The Bermudez Triangle without saying anything else but I’m kicking myself, peeps, I am, because I did not ask her what the book was.   I mean, obviously it wasn’t Maureen Johnson and I’m guessing it didn’t have lesbian teens in it, but you never know.   Now I am left wondering, WHAT WAS THE BOOK?   It’s not keeping me up at night, but still, [kicks self]…

By the time we got to the gym where the shots were being doled out, I’d almost forgotten why we were there, and then when I remembered, I had a panic attack because actually I DON’T LIKE SHOTS but being a MOOOoooooom, I have to pretend that shots are AWESOME and I LOVE them, which was getting increasingly difficult as the shot itself approached. But I am nothing if not All About The Kids, so I pretended that the shot felt like being KISSED BY AN ANGEL which is true if the angel is also a vampire and dragging her teeth slowly through your flesh while spitting poison into your veins. Those shots? Hurt. Actually, that’s a lie. The H1N1 shot hurt not at all. In fact, I thought maybe she hadn’t done it. It felt like being prodded gently in the arm by a jersey cow. The FLU shot (and I have no idea why I agreed to have it, but by the time I got to the nurses, I was very susceptible towards doing anything they said just to get out of there) hurt like [insert swear word here].

Did I mention that our nurse was lovely? She was. She had the most amazing skin and claimed to be 40, i.e. older than me, but I do not for a minute believe her because I swear she was twenty-five and just messing with me, and honestly, in my next life, if I get to make a wishlist, at the top of my list is going to be “lovely skin” although I realize that you don’t get to choose and probably, if I’ve learned anything at all from Fairy Tales and other grimly moral stories, if you ask for lovely skin, you get it but you also get an extra leg or seven nipples or worse. So you should ask only for world peace and doves and happiness for all and then that’s when you get the lovely skin. You know, in case it comes up, you’ll thank me for that advice later.

The Birdy went first, and as expected, she was delighted to rip her shirt off and leap about with the nurse’s keys while chattering away about whatever The Birdy was chattering about, which I can’t remember. She barely paused in her monologue when the needle went in and was pretty excited to have bandaids and to leap up and continue with what she was saying. She did not appear to register the shot at all. Meanwhile, The Bun was getting increasingly anxious. I could tell he was faking being brave and it was KILLING me because oh my god, until you are a parent you don’t know how easily your heart will be ripped out of your chest and wrung out by the sight of your 4 year old pretending to be brave while his chin trembles in fright. He maintained a half-smile during the entire ordeal and did not cry because, he later told me, he hadn’t realized crying was an option. When he found out our neighbour’s son cried, he was beside himself. Why was Matthew allowed to cry and he hadn’t known you WERE ALLOWED? Anyway, TRUST ME, it was poignant. Maybe you had to be there.

In any event, after the painful shots, which were then becoming increasingly, insanely painful as the injected arm tried to vigorously reject the dose of mercury and squalene and assorted other crap and additives that it had just received, we were sent to the waiting area so in case there was some reaction, we would be near nursing professionals.

This is when The Bun lay down on the floor and began moaning. He mumbled, “I’m going to go to sleep, Mummy.” Because he still calls me Mummy. Like a normal preschooler who has not morphed into a teenager overnight. The Birdy at this point was trying to unfold bleachers from the wall, it looked like something that was going to end badly, so I was distracted, which is no excuse for shouting at The Bun, which is what I did, because I assumed he was fooling around and was not actually ailing, which was stupid because we were in the WAITING FOR A REACTION AREA and he was clearly HAVING A REACTION. After I shouted at him, I inspected him closely and realized he was absolutely soaked with sweat and his lips were blue.

We rushed back to the ER nurse who we’d just met at our station and she picked up The Bun as though he weighed 4 pounds instead of FIFTY, which is what he weighs and whisked him to the hospital-like bed set up in the corner, meanwhile I tried to catch up and concentrated on not DYING OF A HEART ATTACK BECAUSE HOLY SHIT HE WAS GOING TO DIE AND OBVIOUSLY I’D MADE THE WRONG CHOICE ABOUT THIS VACCINE. He didn’t die. This is not that kind of post. But it was scary. It wasn’t THAT scary at the time, it’s almost scarier now when I flash back to his face, bluish in colour and the sweat and the way he wasn’t really responding and seemed to already be drifting away. That is something you never want to see in your child’s face, TRUST ME.

I’m not telling you to sway your decision about what you are going to do with the H1N1 vaccine. Do what feels right to you. I feel OK knowing that I’ve protected him from a virus that could have terrible ramifications, but if I had to do it again, after seeing him the way I saw him, I doubt that I could.

He recovered pretty fast, within about twenty minutes he was sitting up and a nurse was stroking his sweaty brow and another one was gently dribbling orange juice into his mouth and I could tell that the balance had shifted between him being in a bad way and him actually relishing this lovely attention. His lips turned pink again and he was able to sit up and by the time we left, he was running around and shrieking as though nothing had happened. Which was good. It was perfect. It was the best ending to that story that I can even think of and I’m good at thinking of alternate endings. So then I went to the toystore and bought him a game that he’s ALWAYS WANTED because at that point I was so relieved that he’d pulled through that I would have bought him a boat or even a small Ferrarri or a goat for the backyard if that is what he asked for. The Birdy got a prize, too, although I am pretty confident she had no idea what was being rewarded as she’d forgotten all about the shot and was now more concerned about whether or not I was going to change her diaper already. Next up, toilet training!

Update: This morning, I woke up so dizzy I couldn’t stand for a few minutes and my arm feels like it’s been thoroughly smashed with a bat. The kids are grumpy (see: arm pain) and I almost threw up and/or fainted in The Birdy’s ballet class (all apparently normal after effects of this vaccine). This vaccine can BITE ME, although arguably it already is, so maybe it can just let up already because I’ve had ENOUGH.

Back to our regularly scheduled nonsense posts about nothing forthwith, I hope.

I was dragged into social networking through obligation. My husband-like-person/sugar-daddy took the job and I agreed to get accounts on all these STUPID SERVICES like Facebook (a blip!) and Twitter (TOTALLY A BLIP!) I used them because he often needed to test features and I needed to have a username to be the recipient of these tests. And I am nothing if not eager to please and v. supportive, so after six months of him begging me to GET AN ACCOUNT ALREADY, I did.

Then, one day, I started to use these services for real. Mostly because I am massively insecure and I realized that both Facebook and Twitter were a way of keeping score. I could get more “friends” that my husband! I could WIN! It may be a blip, but I’m a competitor and I will compete to be QUEEN OF THE BLIP! I will win at all costs! I will CONQUER the BLIP! So I started accumulating Facebook friends and I accidentally got sucked into the world of actually, you know, caring what these people were doing and saying. I started USING THE BLIP. I did. It started to feel less like a blip. After all, I used it, ergo EVERYONE must be doing it. It was awesome! Facebook rawked!*

But Twitter? NO WAY. Twitter gave me flashbacks to AOL chatrooms (A BLIP) and I didn’t get it. And then.

Then.

I tweeted.

And!

I liked it.

I liked the blip. I wanted more of the blip. I GOT VALIDATION FROM THE BLIP.

I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to the blip. And in many ways, the blip that is Twitter has saved me from myself. Let me explain! Because I’m going to anyway! So you can’t stop me! When I picture Twitter in three dimensions, I imagine that it’s like one of those pictures where you have one person standing still in a crowd and the crowd all moving by so fast that they are blurs. I’m like the person standing still. And the 1000+ people that I follow are rushing by. Every once in a while, I can press a button, like in a book I once read by … Nicholson Baker? Nick Hornby? Someone whose name is Nicholas? … and stop time. And when I stop time, I can hear what the twenty or thirty people closest to me are saying (as opposed to randomly humping them, which I think is what happened in the book I’ve forgotten). I can eavesdrop or I can actually TALK MYSELF and people will LISTEN.

“So what?”, you might say, especially if you don’t use Twitter because you think that it’s stupid because in theory it IS stupid and so you are right about that but wrong about it in general.

Here’s the thing. I have pretty terrible social anxiety.** I’m kind of a trainwreck when it comes to social interactions. I am a massive misreader of friendships and am either madly oversharing (assuming you are my best friend in the world) or totally undersharing (assuming that you secretly hate me). In crowds, I’m either having the TIME OF MY LIFE! Or am a quivering mass of nerves, ready to bolt (and possibly break my leg and have to get shot) at any sign of, well, anything. Such as suddenly finding that NO ONE IS TALKING TO ME. Or, sometimes worse, that people ARE talking to me but I cannot come up with witty responses. Or just random things, like thinking I can’t feel my feet. This can cause panic attacks, and my panic attacks are particularly stupid because they come replete with a “OMIGOD I’M NOT BREATHING PROPERLY AM I DYING? I AM DYING, NOW I HAVE HYPERVENTILATED, I’M GONNA FAINT AND DIE! PROBABLY DIE!” sensation (hey, just like everyone else’s panic attacks!) which manifests in compulsive yawning. I know. You’re like, what? It’s true. While I panic, I yawn. One day, I’ll be trying to outswim a tigershark and I’ll yawn and drown and he’ll be like, “What?” But then he’ll eat me anyway. Probably the video will become viral on Twitter and I’ll — at last! — be a trending topic.

ANYWAY. My point is that I have social anxiety and panic and it doesn’t fit well with my life where I am BUSY and often SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE and I can’t run away and hide under my bed or in my bed or really anywhere near my bed, a place I rarely see. Like, ever. I am so tired. But that’s another topic.

I’ve tried drugs, years ago, and then I got weirdly addicted to Paxil and it scared me so that I was having more panic attacks on it than off it and as it turns out, I can’t really metabolize any drugs properly, pot makes me super hyper and paranoid and no, I don’t smoke pot or advocate it, but it’s an example of how everything I do does not work out properly as it says on the bottle, or in the case of pot, as it says in popular culture where everyone just gets mellow and eats Doritos. Probably the only time I SHOULD operate heavy machinery is under the influence of sleeping pills. Anyway, now I have kids, and my panic attacks and social anxiety are like #509 on my list of things I have to think about, so I don’t think about them but the other day I was realizing something crucial, which is really the point of this entire post.

I use Twitter to manage my panic attacks. It’s true. I do. Because when I’m standing in the middle of Safeway or alone in my office or in a playground or wherever, potentially having a cardiac arrest, if I take out my iPhone and take a gander at my @replies or whatever, invariably there is something funny or kind or interesting and I just read Twitter for a minute or two and I find that I’m calm, I’m distracted, I’m not freaking out. My reasoning is that if I care enough to see a video of a GREAT WHITE SHARK BITING ANOTHER GREAT WHITE SHARK IN HALF then I’m probably not actually actively dying. TWITTER SOOTHES ME, DAMN IT. It makes me feel a part of something when I’m actively feeling like I’m falling off the EARTH. It anchors me like like like like… I know! LIKE A BUNCH OF BIRDS HOLDING UP A WHALE! But I am the whale! I AM THE WHALE, DAMN IT! And all you little tweeters, you — my friends — YOU are the birds.

Ha ha! My god, I sound crazy!

Oh wells. I mean, we’re all crazy, aren’t we?

My advice to you is to try Twitter. It has all the soothing effects of Zoloft without the unfortunate sexual side effects or whatever Zoloft does that’s bad that I cannot immediately recall because although Twitter makes me happy, it does not do a damn thing to improve my memory.

Oh, the other thing I was going to say was that there seems to be a trend where a lot of bloggers are just no longer blogging and sites like Regretsy (BEST SITE EVER) are taking over the hit counters of the nation. I don’t have much to say about this. (Blogs are a blip!) I just wanted to write it down so if it comes to pass that blogs fade away and spoof sites take over the interwebs, I can say “I WAS RIGHT!”

I like to be right.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo this month, as you know if you read my blog and care about what I say, so posting may be light, but HAHA that’s sort of ridiculous because NaNoWriMo is no different from my regular job so actually I may just use it as an excuse to post less, but actually I don’t even want to post less because I have a LOT TO SAY and so disregard this entire sentence. This sentence is a blip.

* Facebook rawked until the quizzes took over. Why are the quizzes not a blip? Apparently they are not a blip. I do not understand the quizzes. I do not like the quizzes. I do not like them, Sam I am.

** If you’ve ever seen me public speaking or if you know me, you’ll be like, “WHAT?” because I realize I don’t operate like a person with paralyzing social anxiety. I like public speaking. I love it. It doesn’t fit. I know it doesn’t, but that’s me. I’m a paradox, damn it. AN ENIGMA. Like a mystery wrapped in an onion shrouded with secret sauce.

Look, I’m sorry I had you cut out of my body in a disgusting way.    Believe me, it was grosser for me than it was for you.   I had to a) SEE it (er, you) and b) four stitches.   The place where you once were is still uncomfortable in that revolting, pulling way that stitches are uncomfortable.   But!   These stitches are not long for this world because! All the skin that you once touched now is also being removed, including the four stitches.   I am not happy about this turn of events.   At all.    But I guess I have to say thanks.    Thanks for being ugly and black and making me anxious for six to eight weeks before I worked up the balls to tell my dermatologist that I didn’t care if I had to pay (thanks, BC Medical!), I really really didn’t want you ON me anymore.    If I had listened to everyone who said, “Myenh, it’s probably OK”, what would you have done?   But you looked too much like your long-ago removed brother, Malignant Melanoma, for me to ignore.   Thank goodness I didn’t.   And thank you for not BEING a malignant melanoma.   It’s not always good to grow up to be like your brother, even though you were apparently trying.

On the other hand, the following things freak me out:

1.  Local Anaesthetics

2.  Needles bearing local anaesthetics that have to be dragged around subcutaneously in a way that makes me want to leap from my skin like a clawing cat while screaming like someone giving birth to a cheese grater.

3.  Stitches

When you were removed, I explained to the dermatologist that I really should have taken a Xanax or an Ativan beforehand, or perhaps both.  This is because no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop my feet from trying to kick him in the nuts while he wielded the scalpal.    He laughed and said, “NOT FOR A LITTLE THING LIKE THIS!”   And I said, “Oh!”  But what I meant was, “GIVE ME A XANAX OR AN ATIVAN BECAUSE I AM FREAKING OUT OVER HERE!”   Anyway, he said “No!” (and laughed merrily) and he’s the doctor but I swear I will find some Xanax and/or Ativan before this next “tiny little procedure” that will have me hyperventilating and perhaps throwing up into my shoe beforehand, not to mention during.   Did I mention how that pulling sensation of stitches being dragged through the skin makes me want to behead a chicken with my bare teeth?   No?   Well, it does.   I can’t explain it, that’s just the way it is.

Anyway, you’re gone now, in a lab, having been disgustingly pulled apart.   I can’t say I’m sorry that you’re gone.   I just can’t.   And don’t worry, I’ll be sending a LOT of your brothers your way soon.

Love,

Karen

PS – Seriously, everyone, WEAR SUNSCREEN.   All the time.  You want a  suntan?  It’s totally NOT worth it.   Trust me.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

11:00:40 PM me@hotmail.com*: I am the best stepmother in all the land and you owe me BIG TIME.

11:01:15 PM him@hotmail.com*: What up?

11:01:43 PM me@hotmail.com: Well, my guess would be that it was about 6 orange juices, a mc chicken, fries, a large sprite, some peanut butter toast, and some other non-identifiable things.

11:02:28 PM him@hotmail.com: Don’t get it

11:02:29 PM me@hotmail.com: Let me help.   You know The Stepson?   Well, he just sat up in bed and sprayed his entire room and EVERYTHING IN IT with the thickest, most smelly, revolting projectile vomit ever vomited in the history of vomit.   It’s a vomit that would put Linda Blair to shame.   A vomit for the movies.   A vomit FOR THE AGES.

11:02:59 PM him@hotmail.com: And you cleaned it up?

11:03:01 PM me@hotmail.com: It hit Stripey**, his comics, all his clothes, everything on his floor.   It saturated his carpet, hit books on the shelf on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROOM, sprayed partway out the door…

11:03:01 PM him@hotmail.com: Ok

11:03:09 PM him@hotmail.com: You’re right

11:03:24 PM me@hotmail.com: …and then, while I held out a bowl with unwarranted optimism, it sprayed my hair, my shirt, my jeans and my face.

11:03:41 PM me@hotmail.com: “I think I didn’t eat very well today,” he said.  “I had a really bad diet.”

11:03:58 PM him@hotmail.com: I’m

11:04:02 PM him@hotmail.com: Um

11:04:05 PM him@hotmail.com: Ya

11:04:17 PM me@hotmail.com: “I don’t eat very well generally,” he said***.   “I learned my lesson.”

11:04:24 PM me@hotmail.com: “I feel better now though.   Sorry about the mess!”  he said.

11:04:34 PM me@hotmail.com: “At least it didn’t hit the DS!” he said.  “Probably the warranty wouldn’t cover barf!”

11:05:03 PM me@hotmail.com: So then, for lack of ANY OTHER SOLUTION, I realized that the only way to fix it, after wiping every toy/book/surface with disinfectant was to REMOVE THE CARPET FROM UNDER THE BED****.

11:05:10 PM me@hotmail.com: And get it outside.

11:05:20 PM me@hotmail.com: The smell seeping into my every pore, my gag reflex working in overtime.

11:05:33 PM me@hotmail.com: I single-handedly LIFTED UP THE BED and pulled the carpet out from underneath.

11:05:34 PM him@hotmail.com: Wow

11:05:40 PM me@hotmail.com: But wait!  The carpet is also pinned by the weight of the BOOKCASE!

11:05:49 PM me@hotmail.com: This is no problem for our hero, Super StepMother.

11:06:03 PM me@hotmail.com: She will simply LIFT THE BOOKCASE!   The smell MUST BE ERADICATED or no sleep will be had!

11:06:17 PM me@hotmail.com: The bookcase isn’t that heavy!*****   Hey, this isn’t so bad!

11:06:21 PM me@hotmail.com: But then…

11:06:24 PM me@hotmail.com: HOLY [BLEEP]!

11:06:27 PM me@hotmail.com: It IS that bad!

11:06:31 PM him@hotmail.com: Wow wow wow

11:06:55 PM me@hotmail.com: Because ALL THE THINGS BALANCED ON THE TOP INCLUDING THE 200 POUND BLOCK-MOUNTED DINOSAUR PRINT WILL ALARMINGLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY FALL ON THE BACK OF YOUR BENT-OVER NECK!  GIVING YOU WHIPLASH!

11:07:08 PM me@hotmail.com: AND POSSIBLY BROKEN VERTEBRAE!

11:07:14 PM me@hotmail.com: IN SEVERAL PLACES!

11:07:32 PM me@hotmail.com: But that’s OK now because the carpet is out from under the bookcase.

11:07:43 PM me@hotmail.com: Oh, no it isn’t!   NOT QUITE AND WATCH OUT FOR THOSE…

11:08:14 PM me@hotmail.com: INCREDIBLY HEAVY AND POINTY DRAGON STATUES AND COLLECTION OF LEAD KNIGHTS THAT WE ALSO KEEP UP THERE SO THAT IF EVER THE BOOKCASE MOVES THE PERSON UNDERNEATH IT, FLECKED WITH VOMIT, WILL ALSO GET STABBED IN THE EYE BY AN ERRANT HEAVY DRAGON WING AND WILL HAVE THEIR SKULL CRACKED LIKE AN EGG BY A SIX-INCH KNIGHT CARRYING A SEVEN INCH SWORD!

11:08:30 PM me@hotmail.com: But it’s OK.

11:08:34 PM me@hotmail.com: He has a bowl now.

11:08:59 PM him@hotmail.com: Holy [bleep].

11:09:07 PM me@hotmail.com: He figures if he feels sick again (and if he does, he will barf only acid because there cannot possibly be anything left in that human), he’ll use the bowl or… better yet! … he thinks maybe he’ll GO TO THE BATHROOM AND PUKE IN THE TOILET!

11:10:11 PM me@hotmail.com: And now every single thing he owns that is made from fabric is in the washing machine.   Not including the bedding, which will have to be done tomorrow, or the stuff in the rubbermaid tub, which will also have to be done because the vomit managed to SNEAK IN A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM OF THE TUB.

11:10:31 PM me@hotmail.com: I think maybe the vomit flecks each had their own motor and each swirled around as they flew through the air.

11:10:41 PM me@hotmail.com: Hitting things sideways, backwards, and upside down.

11:10:50 PM me@hotmail.com: So how was your evening?

11:11:54 PM him@hotmail.com: I really have nothing to report

11:12:52 PM him@hotmail.com: Wow

11:13:01 PM him@hotmail.com: That’s all I can say

11:15:20 PM me@hotmail.com: Can you say more than that?  I need a bit more.

11:15:57 PM him@hotmail.com: Thank you?

******

Oh, and for the record?  When I asked his mother later, she swore that The Stepson has NEVER thrown up at home.   How is THAT fair?   I shake my fist at you, Universe.   I SHAKE MY FIST.

* Not our actual IM names.    Although these names probably do belong to someone, it isn’t us.   So if you add these people expecting to find me or Clayton, you will be really really disappointed and may have to endure years of therapy to even partially recover from the pain.

** Name not changed to protect the identity of the lizard because he claimed he preferred it if I used his real name as it’s his only chance to be famous if just for 12 seconds and because of a vomit storm.

*** Generally speaking, he eats the following:   A muffin for breakfast (only the white kind, nothing containing bran) and an orange juice, an orange juice for lunch with perhaps a handful of deli meat and crackers,  chocolate milk, ham or chicken for dinner with raw baby carrots and pickles on the side.    On this day, he apparently ate peanut butter toast, candy, candy, candy, candy, sprite, other pop, MacDonald’s.

****  The TROMSO double loft bed from Ikea, which I must tell you is a NIGHTMARE to make and weighs a metric tonne.

***** Not really, but at that point a six foot bookshelf laden with books was no competition for my coursing adrenalin.

Here’s my story: I woke up yesterday morning with that funny little chest pain that you get when you inhale. You know the one, where you breathe more deeply to test it and then you double over, screaming in pain and contemplate WHY NOW? WHY AM I GOING TO DIE? I DO NOT WANT TO DIE! And you think about all the ways in which you’d prefer to die, meaning “of old age and in your sleep”, not say, “in the mouth of a tiger shark while enjoying some snorkelling off the coast of Oahu”. Then you start worrying about which girl your husband will likely marry TO REPLACE YOU (the bastard) and NOT ONE FEMALE (sluts! all of them!) that you know seems good enough for the role of Mummy to your precious angels, so you stoically sit up and take another breath because THE KIDS NEED YOU, so help you God. (I actually typed “Todd” there instead of “God”. I don’t even know a “Todd”. What is wrong with my brain?) Then the kids do stuff like scream at random intervals for no reason and scare the crap out of you (The Stepson), scream at random intervals because they’ve dropped a toy, book, stick, rock, piece of lego, themselves (The Bun) or scream at random intervals because NEMO LIVES IN THE POTTY AND HE’S GOING TO DIE IF YOU FLUSH IT DO NOT FLUSH IT YOU CAN’T FLUSH IT NEEEEEEEEMOOOOOOOOOOOOO! AND DORY! WHAT ABOUT DORY? DORY IS DEAD!!!! DEAD! IN THE TOILET! All loud noises designed to make you think that maybe that barrista from the coffee shop where your husband gets his daily brew might be better at this than you are anyway, so what the hell, you may as well die, the kids will be better off and overall dying in bed from chest pain is better than being attacked from behind by a cougar while taking an innocent stroll through the underground parking lot at The Empress and bleeding to death in a pool left by someone’s dripping oil pan. Probably. Although the cougar-thing would likely get you in the local paper and stuff, whereas dying of some kind of lung embolism is a bit less newsworthy.

All day the pain got more and more intense until it hurt all the time, on both sides, and also randomly in my hip. I spent at least half of my babysitter-time — i.e. the time when I pay someone else to look after the kids (who NEVER scream when she is here) so I can write my latest book, which is totally awesome by the way and I use the words “totally awesome” to mean “please please please let me live long enough to finish it and then for a long time after that, too, because damn it, I DON’T WANT TO DIE” — Googling variations on “OMFG MY CHEST HURTS SO BAD (BUT ONLY WHEN I BREATHE) AM I GOING TO LIVE SYMPTOMS HIP PAIN” and things like that. At random intervals, the pain would be so severe that I’d be pushed back into my chair by it, like a giant hand shoving me and a loud voice — something British maybe, or German — shouting, “SIT DOWN RIGHT NOW AND DON’T YOU DARE INHALE”. But I like inhaling. It goes so well with exhaling, sort of like a nice zinfandel with a barbecued steak. By 8 pm, I’d had enough. I went to the clinic. Because I’m like that. Inhaling roolz, old skool.

At the clinic, the doctor became alarmed about a mole on my back, which was approximately the last thing that I needed, because, you know, I was busy worrying about the crushing chest pain and did not want to in any way dilute my worry pool with worry about skin cancer. I do that most of the rest of the time, when nothing significant is hurting. Dr. Clinic (I can’t remember his name) correctly diagnosed my problem as a chest wall injury incurred by intense sneezing, which he recommended that I stop doing.

Here’s the problem: I have to sneeze in this certain way, which is to say explosively and in a way that terrifies dogs, the elderly, and small children. If I do not sneeze in this specific way, I a) pee my pants and b) throw my back out. Both of these things suck, especially when you are at a playground with your kids. The KIDS are allowed to pee their pants, but in another illustration of how kids are right and life is NOT fair, adults are not supposed to do it. I know, crazy, right? So as a result of all this excitable, strange, frightening sneezing, I pulled or tore and otherwise damaged some kind of intercostal something or other and this means that for days or weeks or hours or no one actually knows how long, every time I inhale, it feels like someone is thrusting a sharp stick intended for marshmallow roasting into my chest, just above my right boob, and then TWISTING it and stabbing it again and then removing it, dipping it in lighter fluid, igniting it, and doing it again. It ain’t fun. Needless to say, my mood is poor-ish.

You can only imagine how joyful I was when I returned from my chest Xray to find an “informative” brochure in my mailbox from a by-law officer informing me that it was HIGHLY ILLEGAL to park our camper in our driveway. That’s right, in Oak Bay, where I live, you are not permitted to PARK YOUR OWN VEHICLE in YOUR OWN DRIVEWAY in front of the house that you spent EVERY PENNY YOU HAD AND EVERY PENNY YOU WILL EVER EARN on. It is not your driveway. Not really. Your driveway belongs to Oak Bay. The things you are not allowed to put in your driveway include: Campers, Trailers, Boats, Motor Homes, and yes, even CARS if they are not insured, even though insurance laws state that you are, in fact, allowed to store uninsured vehicles on your property. NOT IN OAK BAY. (I don’t care about that, I just hate that Oak Bay can override other laws with their tight-arsed stupidity. See how I said “arse” instead of “ass”? This is because I write books for young adults and I can’t be corrupting them with words like “ass” on my blog. “Arse” sounds much more correct, as I’m sure the Oak Bay council would concur, being a sort of pseudo British enclave of elderly people who abhor both change and recreational vehicles.)

After a brief back and forth with the bylaw officer (no, I don’t mean fistfight, but that may have been more fun because I suspect I could have taken him, the average age of anyone on staff in Oak Bay is 97), it was concluded that I was allowed to have the camper on the property for two days for packing and unpacking, so really what it comes down to is that I cannot have the camper IN MY OWN DRIVEWAY on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. The other days are exceptions because we can have Monday to unpack and Thursday to pack.

I don’t really know why I’m blogging about this or why I’m so annoyed about it, I think it’s the smug little drawings included with the information that have labelled and colour-coded areas marked where storage of these outlandish vehicles that the lower classes insist upon owning IS verily permitted, and areas where such storage is STRICTLY FORBIDDEN, which include camper pads and driveways. I mean, obviously.

Now today’s babysitter time has been fully consumed by me twittering about the whole camper-in-the-driveway thing and compiling lists of things that I plan to store in my driveway that are not on the “restricted items” list (which, lest we forget, only includes vehicles) (I mean, what kind of jackass — sorry, jackarse — would keep a vehicle in their DRIVEWAY?). I think we can blame Oak Bay for the fact that I did not get my 2000 words done today and am in fact stuck in some kind of morass where I have an extra character that I can’t quite fit into the scene, but nor can I remove entirely without the scene falling apart. Such is my life.

Anyway, here is my list so far. Feel free to add your own suggestions.

1. A heap of old appliances, the rustier the better, with a sign tacked to the top that says “FREE”.
2. A rotting deer carcass, with a warning “informative brochure” attached to let other deer know that deer are not welcome in Oak Bay.
3. A miniature horse (real or stuffed, haven’t decided yet) — or better yet, an entire hobby farm of animals.
4. A life-sized model of Santa’s sleigh, replete with eight tiny reindeer, or maybe even nine, made from illuminated plastic that flashes at uneven intervals, giving all passers-by immediate seizures.
5. A huge still, in which to make grain alcohol, that we’ll sell at a lemonade stand (also on the driveway).
6. A guillotine, labelled “Danger! Sharp blade! Do not stick your head on blade!”
7. A large collection of brightly painted ladders (which we could refer to as an “artistic statement” and then sue the by-law enforcers for infringing on our creative rights when they tell us that we can’t do that).
8. All our living room furniture, arranged to look exactly like our living room, where we will commence to live.
9. The giant, red octopus play-structure that we could steal from Cadboro Bay Gyro Park. (Which is in Saanich, where it’s probably legal to own — or even steal — one.)
10. Cardboard cut-outs of every member of Oak Bay’s enforcement squad, arranged on our living room furniture, with glasses of our fresh distillery drinks in their hands, moustaches drawn on each and every one of them
11. A large cardboard re-creation of the camper itself. This would technically be legal because it is not a camper, per se.
12. A bear. Like a real one. Probably a brown one because bears mostly come in brown and not a grizzly because they are terrifying. Which we could get from somewhere, I’m not sure where. I’m also afraid of bears, so this is my least favourite idea, but I’m just brainstorming here.
13. 47 beehives. Beehives have recently been given the A-OK from council, so why not?
14. That really big frightening clown/gnome statue from that gas station on the highway where there used to be a bumper car place.
15. A troupe of gypsies and their caravans. Caravans are not on the list, obviously just an oversight, but let’s exploit that loophole!
16. Six rottweilers in a chainlink pen, sandwiched between the remains of four Camaros. (All insured, of course.) (I don’t know how to spell Camaro.)
17. A wading pool in which we could keep a seal from the marina so that people waiting at the bus stop could feed it frozen herring for $2/bag, all profits going to charity, of course. We know how Oak Bay feels about businesses.
18. A number of yurts which we could rent out by the night, billing it as a healing community on the sea. Of course, that would be a business, too. Oh, Oak Bay, you got me again. Just when I think I can outsmart you, there you are, being all Righty McRighteous Rule-Enforcerson. Drat.

I don’t know how to wind up this post, so I’m just going to go ahead and stop typing, go upstairs and get more Tylenol, and contemplate how if I’d used up these 1970 words on the novel instead of the blog, I’d be a good deal closer to finishing the book, wouldn’t I? Thanks a LOT, Oak Bay.

But I digress.

My usual M.O. when faced with any kind of medical situation is to turn up the funny, so I showed up for the test that I did not sleep through in spite of the dream I had that I did sleep through it, ready to brighten the tech’s day with my non-stop witticisms.    Unfortunately for me, she was having none of it.   Like, seriously, none.   I’m sure if she had a ruler, she would have used it to rap me sharply on the knuckles for speaking at all, much less for saying such hilarious one-liners as, “So is it a boy or a girl?”  (Her response, “This is a heart test, ma’am.”)   She really missed her calling.   She should have been a nun, circa 1920, teaching at a strict boarding school that featured The Ruler as well as maybe hair shirts and self-flagellation.

Like I said, I’ve had this test at least six times before, if not more than that.   I pretty much know how it goes.   However, this was the first time I’d had a tech roll her eyes, sigh with irritation, and say, “I don’t know who told you that you have a mitral valve prolapse, there’s nothing wrong with your mitral valve.”

“Sorry,” I said, as though maybe I’d made the whole thing up and not that I’d undergone batteries of cardiac tests as a pre-teen and been diagnosed by a, you know, CARDIOLOGIST, as opposed to relying on an ultrasound tech for diagnosis and treatment.  “Maybe I grew out of it?”

“YOU DON’T GROW OUT OF A MITRAL VALVE PROLAPSE,” she roared disdainfully, if you can roar disdainfully.   I’m sure she did.   It was the kind of thing she was good at, I was fast learning.

All the while, she was gouging into my chest with the ultrasound wand, something I remembered being much more gentle in the past.   You know those faith healers who can reach into your abdomen and pull out some kind of pulsing chicken heart?   It was like that, only without the healing or the chicken heart or the faith.

“Is it suppose to hurt?” I ventured.

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.  “It’s non-invasive.”

She sighed again, with such alarm that I became concerned.  “What?  What?” I said.  “Am I having a cardiac embolism?”

“NO,” she said.  “The button came off my KEYBOARD.”

“Oh!” I said, brightly, because actually I was kind of relieved to not be actively dying.   “You never see THAT on Star Trek.”   Then I did a brilliant impression of Uhuru or whatever her name is pulling the button off the whatever it was that she operated in her tiny short skirt.

“What?” she said.

“On Star Trek,” I said.  “The equipment never fell apart.   Doesn’t really inspire confidence, does it?”

“It’s just a BUTTON,” she said.   I was beginning to pick up on the vibe that maybe this woman did not like me, or my sense of humour.   So I shut up.

“You’re ALMOST in normal syncope,” she said.

Now I have no idea what that means, but I’m pretty sure I’d rather hear that sentence without the word “almost” inserted into it in capital letters.

“Great!” I said.   At that point, I just wanted to get along.   When I got home, I looked up “normal syncope” and found out that it refers to a temporary loss of consciousness associated with heart irregularities.   None of which makes sense in the context she used it in, so I can only assume she had no idea what she was talking about, or I could go ahead and guess that she’s RIGHT and I have a horrible heart problem and perhaps a week to live.  I like to waffle back and forth between these possibilities, and as a result have had chest pain all week.  Go, me.   I’m pretty sure it’s psychosomatic, or that I’m dying.    The results apparently take a week and although I’ve never before put a second thought into this particular test and its results, I’m now going to spend a bunch of time Googling and fretting while the kids jump up and down on my head and arm occasionally poking a finger into my eye and screaming “MEEP!” because once when The Birdy pressed my nose and said “MEEP!”, I responded by tickling her and she’s still hoping that there is SOME part of me that she could poke that will result in hilarity and tickling as opposed to resulting in snappish Mummy threatening the naughty chair if she loses the sight in her right eye as a result of a misdirected “MEEP!” while she was trying to type a blog post.

The test went on for about forty minutes and involved a lot of bruising.  By the end of it, I was just closing my eyes and hoping for it to be over, when she said, “Your lung is REALLY in the way, I can hardly even SEE your heart.”  As though maybe other people on whom she performs this test actually don’t have a pesky lung making her job EVEN MORE DIFFICULT THAN IT ALREADY IS.

As I was leaving, she suddenly transmogrified into a completely different person.  “Nice to meet you!” she said.  “Hope you have a great day!  How’s the weather out there?”

“Fine,” I said.   And I left, slamming the door behind me, only it wasn’t the kind of door that you can slam, it was one of those slow-closers, which didn’t exactly impart the dramatic gesture of displeasure I was hoping to communicate.   Oh wells, there’s always next year or five years from now or whenever I have it done again.    Stay tuned.

Here is my story.

When I was twenty, I was going to university in Vancouver.   I was studying International Relations at UBC and becoming an expert on How To Have A Panic Attack In Public Without Anyone Knowing.   In retrospect, I have no idea why I was so high-strung during those years, I think it’s because I never actually got any rest:  I went from school to work to running long distances for no reason to out-in-the-evening to school again to frantic-last-minute-report-writing and back to work again without much sleep in between.   That may have been part of it.   In any event, I was pretty freaked out for almost the entire time.   One of the symptoms of this was to get short of breath and then to hyperventilate and faint.   Don’t I sound like I was fun back then?   A whole barrel of crazy monkeys, let me tell you.   So one day, I hyperventilated and fainted in the Student Union Building and so that I could feel less like an idiot, I let someone take me to the doctor so that she could tell me that I had hyperventilated, which I already knew because I did it all the time.   However, she also said, while listening to my hysterical breathing, “How long has this mole been on your back?”   My answer was, “How should I know?”   For one thing, it was tiny, about 2mm across, and perfectly round.   It looked like someone had just drawn a dot on my back with a Sharpie, although probably I would have noticed if that had happened, but I had recently been unconscious, maybe someone saw that I’d fainted and thought it would be fun to dot my back.   I had no idea.   I just wanted her to fix me so that I stopped hyperventilating and fainting in public, which was embarrassing.

“You have to get that taken off,” she said.  “Right now.”

So before I knew it, I was downstairs in her building in the office of Dr. No Manners.   I can’t remember his name, so I’ve made one up, in case you think that was actually his name.   Dr. No Manners said, “Meet me at St. Paul’s tomorrow at 3.”

“OK,” I said.   For some reason, I still wasn’t concerned.   I was mostly still worried about how many people had seen me pass out in front of the coffee shop.

The next day, I met him at St. Paul’s, where I had to wait for him in the ER waiting room for two hours.   The time went by pretty quickly with just trying not to faint yet again:   there was one person with a gushing head injury and another woman, who I will never forget, who had a miscarriage right there in the waiting room.    V. glamorous, if by “glamorous”, I mean “tragic and heartbreaking.”   Finally Dr. No Manners showed up and steered me into some surgical suite which strongly resembled a janitor’s closet.   He explained that usually patients were unconscious when they were in there, so the fact there were mop buckets also present wasn’t usually an issue.   Oh.   Well, that makes sense.   He proceeded to cut the offending mole off my back.   Why I was there alone with no one to hold my hand, I have no idea, but there I was.   At one point in the procedure, the phone rang and Dr. No Manners actually put the scalpal down on my back while he talked on the phone about a barbecue, I’m not kidding, and blood trickled down my side.   They don’t call him Dr. No Manners for nothing.

A week later, I was summoned to Dr. No Manners’ office, where he thrust a piece of paper at me.   It said, “Stage __ Melanoma.”   I did not know what this meant as I was not yet a full-fledged hypochondriac.   I thought it meant “skin cancer that can easily be removed”.   So I went home and called my dad, who is a doctor, and said, “It said something like Stage something-or-other Melanoma and they’re going to remove it again.   I guess remove more of it.   I don’t know.   I have finals though.   Do you think this will get in the way of exams?”

“What stage?”  Dad asked.  “WHAT DID IT SAY?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.  “Is it important?”

Apparently my dad got off the phone and my whole family mourned my inevitable passing.   But I still did not know it was serious.  I had NO IDEA.   I carried on, let Dr. No Manners remove more tissue, and then wrote an exam while so stoned on painkillers I couldn’t remember my student number much less any ideas I may have had about the repurcussions of the AIDS outbreak in Zaire.    A few days later, I got a call from Dr. No Manners nurse and she told me that he felt they had got it all and referred me to the cancer clinic.

I still had no idea.   I thought the Cancer Clinic thing was a bit OTT for a little mole, but I went along with it.   My doctor at the Cancer Clinic, Dr. Jason Rivers, explained that every six months I would have every square inch of my skin photographed, then each batch of photos would be contrasted with the previous so that any change in my skin would be recorded and could be taken care of.   At this point, I began to puzzle over the amount of trouble that seemed to be going into my ongoing care.   Every six months?   Forever?   Photos of me?  NAKED?   What the ____?

That’s when I started to do my homework.   That’s when I found out that say I hadn’t hyperventilated and fainted while in line for my daily blueberry muffin, and I hadn’t gone to the doctor, and she hadn’t looked down and seen this tiny black dot on my back, and I hadn’t let Dr. No Manners remove it, say all that never occurred, then guess what?   I would have died.

Died.

I wouldn’t be typing this some eighteen years later because I wouldn’t be here.   I wouldn’t be buying dresses, raising kids, writing books, and worrying about why one eye always seems to be slightly out of focus, because I would be dead.    I wouldn’t be anxious about the five pounds I’ve mysteriously gained, the fact that I’m almost forty, or the book that I’m not finished yet.   I.   Would.   Be.   Dead.

There are a lot of different kinds of skin cancer, many of which can be easily removed, and then there is melanoma, which very quickly metastasizes to the rest of your body, most frequently your brain.    Your odds of survival after the melanoma has grown a certain amount below the surface of your skin are only 5%.   It is one of the worst, most insidious kinds of cancer, and it operates as efficiently and methodically and unemotionally as a serial killer.   I know two people personally whose lives were forever changed by this cancer:  one friend lost her brother and another lost her mother.    This kind of cancer is deadly.

I think about my melanoma and my incredible luck to have found it so early (especially when you consider that it was on a part of my body that I never, ever would have seen myself) a lot in the summer.   We live a block from the beach and we go there a lot (in long sleeves or at the very least SPF 50 and wide brimmed hats) and I see all these young kids lying out in the sun, dark brown (or, worse, red) in the summer sun.   They are laughing now and having a great time, and they seem to be oblivious even though that seems impossible to me, in this day and age, like seeing kids who are smoking, you stop and think, “ARE YOU SERIOUS?”   But they’re immortal, right?   Wrong.   No one is.

So this isn’t the least bit funny and it’s not supposed to be.   YOU do not want to die.   This week marks the eighteenth anniversary of my first appointment at Cancer Clinic, which means that my skin has been examined by a dermatologist, looking for the tiny markers of a death sentence, thirty-six times.   I have had countless moles removed and biopsied, and I’ve been so lucky.   I want you to be lucky, too.   Check your skin.    Regularly.    Stay out of the sun, or if you’re in the sun, cover up.   Figure out that suntans aren’t “beautiful”.   They’re deadly.    Don’t take it for granted, because it can all be taken away.    You often don’t know if you’ve lost the genetic crapshoot until it’s too late.

This week, I learned something that I didn’t know about sun exposure and melanoma:   It doesn’t matter if you’re burning or tanning, the changing colour in your skin indicates that your body’s natural defences have been killed by the sun.    You are putting yourself at risk.

I know posts like this probably don’t have the impact that I wish that they had, but if reading this makes you change your own sun-habit, then it was worth the hour that it took to type.   My mum used to say, “Brown fat looks better than white fat.”   And I guess I believed that for a long time.   I used to lie in the sun, but as often as not I’d get hot and uncomfortable and move to the shade.   But as a kid, I was often tanned, occasionally burned.   Sun exposure in childhood is one of the strongest indicators of melanoma risk.   I was the only one in my family to have melanoma, but that’s the genetic component:   you don’t know who inherited it until they’re diagnosed.   Maybe one day there will be a blood test for it, but as far as I know there isn’t right now, so keep your kids protected when they are outside in the sun.   And yourself.   After all, pale skin may not hide your unsightly veins, but no one is going to see those veins anyway if you’re in a box under the ground, are they?