Working on a post.

 I have a post coming. Trying to have more info first. 

Tracy

Tuesday

 So, ya, there’s a 6.44 cm lesion on my spleen, that’s just over 2.5 inches, In an organ the size of a fist. 

I’m going to get a CT scan of my pancreas. I have to take my ultrasound and the CT scan to an oncologist appt next Wednesday.  Apparently, it’s super rare that if this lesion were to be cancerous that cancer starts in your spleen. I don’t know why. It’s almost always a secondary cancer that has spread to your spleen. We did look at my pancreas in the ultrasound but a more in-depth view is needed, I guess. 

It sounds scary as fuck. However, it could be a benign granuloma, they can happen if you’ve had A LOT of serious infections, that’s me and my kidneys, right? My primary says that that could very well cause the lesion. Apparently, In your spleen and lungs and maybe other stuff, if a bacteria invades and organ,  your body can wall it off with calcium deposits to stop the invasion. This lesion is solid, not fluid, so if not a cancerous mass then calcium or otherwise called granulomas. 

I was in full on panic mode, especially when I heard the word “pancreas” I’ve told you guys that treatment is not an option for me if I were to ever have cancer of the pancreas. It goes too fast and treatment only prolongs the pain for you to die a miserable death and I’m not a fan of that, so panic, well, is there something above panic? Like uncontrollably shaking during all wakeful hours of the day? Because that’s it. But!!! I’m feeling better having spoken to my doctor… A whopping EIGHT times on Monday! I swear, the woman is a saint. She called me, for the record, I wasn’t panic dialing her, I was too busy shaking. When she called the final time I said “ ( Dr’s first name) I was just missing you” she thought that was funny. Yes, we’re on a first name basis already!

I’m getting blood work on Wednesday that will also give some pancreas info. Could be infected which might be what’s causing the pain too. Good times!

Have you ever had your bar so low that you’re praying for pancreatitis? 

Ok, must be going, if I remember correctly there’s a golf tournament in Oklahoma this week sometime? It’s raining hard as hell here tonight.  Has been most of the last week. Not really humid either and hasn’t been very hot. Not sure what OK is like though. Hope to see pics.

Me.

Well, there’s this….

 There’s a 2 1/2 in lesion on one of my organs that shows up in the ultrasound. I won’t know more or what else was found until maybe Monday. 

If you need me before then I’ll be curled up in a ball in the corner of my bedroom. Thanks. 

Anxiety is fun.

Me

My Story

 First, the emails I’ve been getting have nearly all been so positive and warm and I appreciate that immensely.

Here we go, hopefully the condensed version but you know me, I’m chatty.

I was Stupid, yes, with a capital S, Stupid. I was 18 years old, I had a baby already, I knew how these things worked.  Statistics show that a teen mother will get pregnant again within the next two years. Yay me! Rushing to go to the front of the line of a shitty statistic. You know what they say, either go hard or go home. 

I was smitten. Was smitten the very first day we met. As my mother and I were walking out of the business that we’d met at I said to her “ I’m gonna date him.” 

There was a teeny tiny little problem though, he was in a relationship already. Being a determined little minx, I wasn’t that deterred.

When he started showing interest my little heart leapt out of my chest. It wasn’t possible, I thought, I had been saying all those things to myself about being a sinner and a whore and who was ever going to see something beyond that and for some reason, I was completely blind to the fact that he was already dating the Madonna in the scenario. 

So, going all in was fun. He was fun. He was cute and funny and smart. The secret was fun for awhile, the whispers and sideway glances and that fluttery heart, I’d never felt like that before.

For some reason my memory is that we went for a drive on Halloween night. I’d dressed like a jester and after work I drove home quickly to change clothes. We always went for drives. We parked in this gravel lot off to the side of the road. We got into the back seat of his car and had sex for the first time. It was awkward and uncomfortable and not ideal in any way. 

We got back into the front seats and as I was closing my door I was calculating the days since my last period had started and 12,13….14. I ran that over in my head a few times and as the door closed I clearly remember thinking “Holy shit. I’m pregnant” 

I was bursting inside with panic and I, casually, ask, “what’s going to happen if I’m pregnant?” I have no memory of his answer because I was caught up in my own head.

I was nearly paralyzed with fear. Ironically my fear had nothing at all to do with what was going to happen with him. I never felt concerned about his reaction. I didn’t feel like he’d leave me. I literally have no idea why I didn’t even consider that that part would go south. I can’t explain it. I was in fear of having to tell my family. Not even my mom and dad, family, but my grandparents!! Omg. I could not imagine the horror, disappointed looks in their eyes, the wicked backlash. I’d just started to get back into their good graces. They thought I was a good mama. They loved me again and my cousins, oh shit, the black sheep black sheeped again! On the drive home I was already wondering if I could get away with never seeing my family again. Being sick for family functions for 18 years. My parents were in the middle of separating, both dating again, where the fuck was I gonna go? Neither one was going to want me dragging two kids into their newly single, living free, sleeping with all the people, life. 

So, I missed my period. Obviously. I saw that one coming. He’d ask every so often if I’d started yet. Nope. We kind of ignored it for awhile, you know, maybe it will just go away!!

We went for a drive. Parked deep into these bushes and started to talk about it. This was one of the conversations that I’ve had in my life that I will never stop feeling a pang one my chest when I replay it. 

Me: well, if you won’t marry me.. ( God, how stupid was I at this point?)

Him: marry YOU?! MARRY… YOU!? I’m not going to marry you, I’m with someone!!!!

I felt like I was going to throw up. How on this fucking planet had I managed to not once but twice find myself in the worst possible position in the world? And only by the age of 18!!!!! 

I curled up into a ball and looked out the window into the darkness. He drove me home. If I could travel back in time only one time for three minutes, that is where I’d go. I’d hug me tightly and tell me to be my bravest self. I’m crying while writing this part. 

It seemed to ramp up after that. He called my one day and asked if he could come over. He said he’d spoken with his cousin, whose girlfriend had had an abortion, and I’d need to do this and this and that, he’d get the money to pay for it and that was that.

I was already showing, as I’ve written about on here before. It was getting late. I didn’t want an abortion. I’d already had a baby and I now knew what this baby looked like at it’s gestation. I hated myself for getting into that position. I couldn’t think straight. My emotions were drowning out my thoughts. I was so so scared of the repercussions. Terrified. Alone. All alone. There was literally no person alive that I could go to or tell. I can feel my stomach churn to this day over my position. I couldn’t think of what I could do. 

We left my house really really early in the morning to get to the hospital before the protesters did. Because of them all the procedures were done by like 6:30am. 

I was a couple of weeks too far along to have an abortion but because the doc didn’t know that until it was too late he had to go through with it. I bled a lot. I had two nurses holding my arms down across my chest.One was whispering “ Go to a happy place” Where was that exactly? I was laying there in the dark of the morning, aborting a baby illegally( because of the gestation age) avoiding crowds of people wanting to call me a killer, a sinner, a whore. Hoping that I’d die from the blood loss. There was no escape to a happy place.

We went to his apartment. Pulled in to park and the radio was playing Keep Your Hands to Yourself by the Georgia Satellites. How’s that for a useless memory?

And my life went on….. Mostly.

Tracy 

Stuff

 I had my scans and ultrasound on Tuesday and was supposed to get the results on Wednesday but the imaging place didn’t send them over. That’s how these things work.

I have an appointment with an oncologist next Wednesday. 

I’m supposed to schedule appointments with a cardiologist and a neurologist in the next month.

Those last two are because whenever I stand up I’m still getting dizzy but, hello! I have next to no iron in my blood, iron helps carry oxygen, it’s common sense that I’d get light headed. I’m not worried about those two doctors. I had x-rays, ct scans and an mri of my brain the last time I was in the hospital so, I can’t see how my brain is a problem. 

I wore a super cute new dress ( all my shopping for Mother’s Day has finally been delivered) and some cute Kate Spade x Keds with it and then we went out to dinner to a brewery. It wasn’t great and as soon as we went in I realized that they have one in Chandler, az that we’d been to years ago. I think they have five locations so small world. It’s been nice getting to go on dates every week. We always walk around our island afterwards and I still love it here. It’s spectacular. We’re super fortunate.

I’m writing my abortion story. It’s gonna take a minute. 

Tracy

BE BRAVE

 I have been wanting to address this topic but it’s such a HUGE conversation that I haven’t known where to start or what to say or if it matters if I even speak out about it.

What I landed on is that, like mental health, health issues of all types can be cause for embarrassment or feelings of shame or likely to be judged and therefore we often times don’t talk about them.

Abortion is likely the most divisive healthcare topic in the United States and it has everything wrapped up into it: Access to medical care, links to poverty, also expands across all social economic groups, guilt, shame, judgment, fear, secrecy, depression, assumptions, lack of responsibility, blaming one sex over the other, political implications, moral implications, religious implications, family support or lack there of, access to birth control, sex education that includes teaching girls to watch for signs in their bodies including types of vaginal mucus so that they have more knowledge because knowledge is power, myths, lies, false information, lack of information, lack of facts….I could be here all day long on this part alone!

What is the most ironic part of all this religious clutching of pearls is that I didn’t have an abortion at 16, you’d of thought that all those sitting on thrones of judgement would have thrown me a bone, a little “ atta girl” but even though I wasn’t called a killer I was definitely stilled called a sinner and a whore. My church community vanished. My extended family vanished. My grandparents made me vanish off of their walls. Took down photos of me even as a baby. Shunning. It was the beginning of the realization that people don’t care if you do or don’t have an abortion, they care about using the subject as political leverage. Or moral superiority.

 Either way you’re a sinner and a whore. 

Out of the top 10 states for number of abortions given each year FIVE are red states. #2 is Texas # 3 is Florida.

Let that sink in for a minute. 

Coincidentally, the states with the lowest literacy rates are #3 Florida and #4 Texas. 

Number one in the country for the lowest amount of residents covered by healthcare? Texas. Pulling up not far behind is Florida at # 4. Oklahoma is # 2. Georgia is #3. 

States with the highest teen pregnancy rates: #1 Mississippi #2 Arkansas #3 Louisiana 

States with the highest poverty rates #1 Mississippi #2 Louisiana 

If Republicans actually cared about children, beyond the fetus, then why are they consistently the worst states to live in? Why don’t they have the highest literacy rates? Why aren’t they throwing money into education? Why don’t they welcome any clinic that will provide access to birth control? Why don’t they boost their minimum wage to keep up with inflation? Why don’t they seem to want families, women, children to thrive? Because then they’d lose a political whipping boy. God forbid they help any woman who might be having premarital sex. 

One in four women will have had an abortion by the age of 45 years old.

ONE IN FOUR. 

Now, I want you to stop for a minute. 

Think of the women you know well, the women you work with, the women you go to church with, the women in your neighborhood, now imagine that one in four of them has had an abortion. Do you like these women, respect these women, love these women? Which ones would you condemn? Which ones would you yell obscenities to? Which ones would you call a whore or a sinner or a killer? 

You don’t know who they are. You don’t know which Sunday school teacher, which pre-school, grade school, junior high school, high school,  professors, have had abortions. Which doctors, nurses, cashiers, choir members, bank tellers, mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, have had abortions. Which of them will you picket tomorrow? Condemn? HATE?

Common sense will tell us that if one in four women have an abortion and the top two out of three states for abortions given are red states,  then statistically speaking,  not every women having an abortion is a liberal. Conservative women have them too but they are much more likely to keep it a secret because of their community. They are much less likely to receive support of any kind for an unplanned pregnancy or even a viable pregnancy with a child that has a condition incompatible with life, often forced by their peers to continue with a pregnancy that will end in death or severe birth defects. 

I have been surrounded by conservative women my entire life and I have driven one to get an abortion and had several tell me their stories of abortion because they knew they could. I am in no position to judge. 

Religious beliefs should have no bearing on our laws as a nation. It’s fundamental to our rights to be free of legal religious prosecution and to be free of religious beliefs dictating morals through laws. 

Imagine the slippery slope of one day having a religion, that doesn’t line up with yours, dictating laws. Should we then cover our heads? Refuse blood transfusions, be restricted from eating seafood? These things are held tightly as beliefs that one must follow or it’s a sin against God. Is that then justification for new laws? Will conservatives not only sit quietly by but fervently push for religious based laws regardless of the religion or only if those laws a Christianity based laws?

Men. Where are the men, besides insisting on taking away our rights? What are the consequences for getting a women pregnant? What laws will be in force to make them be a parent? Don’t tell me about child support laws either because that’s laughable. They don’t work and they have no bearing on what a human body goes through to carry and birth a child. Where’s the equivalent for men or, are we as a society, simply never going to move past the “ Sinner and Whore” complex we see women in the primary role of? Or “Madonna and Whore.” Why is it solely the women we focus on. The women we see?

Where are the men who are husbands, boyfriends, brothers, fathers of these one in four women who have abortions? Where are their voices? Why aren’t they just as loud as the women they profess to love? Where? Their silence is deafening.

Am I pro choice? First, there is no such thing as pro abortion and that is simply idiotic to say so, so, pro choice. I hate abortion. There are some women that having had an abortion is not traumatic, but the majority of women will never be the same. The emotional damage far outweighs the physical damage of LEGAL abortion but it haunts every day. There are very few women who have had an abortion that don’t think of themselves as those names we are called. Society can’t do or say anything to me that I haven’t done or thought to myself. If I’d had my way During my second pregnancy, the one in which I’d had an abortion, I wouldn’t have gone through with the procedure, I’d have that child to this day. But, to be very very honest with you, with my first pregnancy,  I had no business having motherhood forced on me as a teen. If I’d been given the option by my parents who had control of my access to healthcare, I can not say that I’d have become a mother at 16. I was mature for my age but I really, really, did not grasp the reality of what was happening. I am pro-it’s your decision. I wouldn’t have been able to make the choice to have another abortion, so for myself I was never going to consider that an option again, but I have no right to dictate what choice you make. It’s not my place. It’s above my pay grade. I can only empathize.

Will the silent fathers of babies that have been aborted speak out? Probably not. Not unlike those women, their lives have gone on and they probably don’t want anyone to know. Unlike the luxury those men enjoy, we HAVE to because it’s women’s rights at risk. 

This shouldn’t be a political volleyball. It has no business in politics. It’s personal. It’s private. It’s no Politicians business what goes on between me and my doctor!

I’d love to see men come out with their stories. Support the women they know and love and future women as well. That is my hope. 

I might tell part of my story next. We need to start talking about them. I need to do my part in speaking out… It’s just….. difficult.

Tracy 

It’s coming!

 I know, I know! It’s a lot to unpack. It’s a lot of typing with no spelling checks, no punctuation, stream of thoughts, feeling, facts….

I’m working on it!

As a side note, saw my doctor today, she’s lovely and beautifully pregnant with a basketball tummy. 

I’m getting scans done on my spleen and pancreas Tuesday. Checking for…. That thing. The unmentionable thing. I’m telling you right now, if there was to be any of that thing found on my pancreas there will be no treatments. It’s a quick little demon and I’m not about prolonging suffering. I’m gonna get drunk, stay drunk and go on a kick ass vacation. 

It’s not though. I don’t have that gut feeling. I don’t feel afraid. Nervous, of course, I’m  still me, after all. It’s fine. Could be that it’s my spleen killing off my red blood cells and that’s a thing that happens but, it’s not a death sentence or anything, more like a pain in the butt. 

No worries.

Night luvs,

Me

Upcoming post

 We’re gonna get real about abortion. Buckle up. Facts, opinions, our bodies, politics, religion, morality, judgment, grief, name calling, finger pointing, and let’s get to talking! Now has to be the time!

Me

THEY CALL HER A KILLER AND THEY

 CALL HER A SINNER AND THEY CALL HER A WHORE

GOD FORBID YOU HAD TO WALK A MILE IN HER SHOES, THEN YOU MIGHT KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE TO HAVE TO CHOOSE 

Friday Night/Saturday Morning

 How’s that for a headline? Gripping, right?

Mother’s Day: 

Loaded Holiday. So is Valentines Day. So much unnecessary pressure. We don’t do Valentine’s, that was my idea. After YM was born that day it just couldn’t be topped. I was and am happy with Valentines being replaced as a birthday. 

Mother’s Day, since my oldest was married it’s always been a day to punish me when his wife was in a mood. I’d get nothing and receive no phone calls from him. The OM does the same now, started last year. 

Expectations seem to fall short of the Hallmark cards.

We should maybe show the people that we love how we feel more than one day a year instead of a holiday. That seems like it would just be nicer to randomly do something special, any little thing that’s personal and will express true feelings. 

Take your mother to lunch

Buy your mom a coffee and have a nice chat

Bring your mom some flowers just because.

Buy a nice candle to warm her heart.

Send her for a massage add in a nice glass of champagne.

Rake your mother’s leaves

Mow her grass

Buy her a new dress

Walk her dog

Give her a card in which you write something personal 

Say “ I love you” before she does.

Just any day of the year. It will mean a lot, I promise. 

I’m starting to feel the 4 iron level. I’m looking like I have an iron level of four!! I’m so pale even my tan went away! I maybe look a little raccoon-ish, in a cute way, of course. I am a little bit barfy, my favorite, and my heart does feel like it’s pounding out of my chest so, I am still alive. I can’t get into a hematologist, they wait is crazy! I think I’m going to see an oncologist instead, which sounds scarier than it is, oncologists specialize in blood stuff too! I’ve been to one before when I had iron infusions. I don’t think I have cancer. I’ve always been some degree of anemic. It’s just me. Likely that I have a disease that stops my bone marrow from making iron and/or my body from being able to absorb it. That’s what I’ve diagnosed myself with, I’m good, right? I am having some pain in my stomach and abdomen, I have lost weight because of it. That’s the question mark for me. The extra symptoms that I haven’t had before. The outlier. I don’t feel a sense of doom around it. Plus what am I gonna do? It is what it is and I’ll deal with whatever. I do need to try and eat a whole cow though, I think that might do the trick.

Have to go,

Night luvs

Tracy

Well, Damn….

 Had some blood work done last week and thought it would be fine, In fact, I thought I’d be getting a gold star! Why? Well, let me tell you.

I’m anemic. A month ago I started taking a prescription iron pill. Supposed to be easier to absorb. And it was for a good three weeks until it started to make me sick, which iron does to me and most other people, BUT! I thought, good for me! Three weeks is longer than I’ve ever been able to take iron before so I must have done some good, right?

See, your iron is supposed to be at a level somewhere between 50-157. Mine was at 11, which is obviously too low, but I had gone for THREE WEEKS!! 

My doc calls me and she sounds upset. I have no idea why, I’m ready for my gold star, Baby! And the conversation went like this:

Doc: Um, about your iron, 

Me: ( ready to take that star and wear it on my shirt all week long!)

Doc: your iron actually went down while on iron.

Me: WTF? But, what does that mean?

Doc: well, I need you to make an appointment today to see the Hematologist… AND, your potassium is too high and I’m afraid that you’re at a high risk, between the two, to have a heart attack any time now. If you have chest pains, call an ambulance, sending a prescription in, see me on Friday the 13th for more blood to see if the medication is working. Don’t engage in stressful activities or situations. And she says…. Could be a few different things, by the way…. Maybe cancer or Celiac disease. You’ll get testing done, probably a colonoscopy too…. 

Well, fuck me, I guess.

 My iron level now? FOUR. As in, almost none. Zip. Nearly nada. I need transfusions, at least.

Me: This doesn’t feel like a gold star. Frozen stiff from terror. Ok, thanks….?

So, cool. Wish me luck.

Tracy

This Is The Life

 I’m floating in a pool, drinking an Old Fashioned with an extra cherry, waiting for the resort to feed us a “down home BBQ” outside by candles and twinkle lights. I’ll need to get dressed soon but I’ll probably have one more cocktail first.

The irony is not lost on me that we left Texas to have BBQ in Arizona.