Basal, Squamous, Actinic Keratosis, or What?

Okay, so I have a spot on my right arm.  On the other side from the weird, fleshy dent.  I don't really know how long it's been there--seems to me, it started as a small ingrown hair or something that I picked at.  It healed, but the redness never went away.  Then, a few months ago, it started flaking.  Not oozing or healing then reforming, but flaking.  Sometimes redder, sometimes paler, but always a little bit of flaky skin.

Understand, I am a mound of flaky skin--I have some freaky psoriasis-type thing on my scalp during the cold months, I have some red, angry, crusty stuff that forms around my nose in the winter (responds to Metrogel, so I'm going to assume it's rosacea).  But I've also had a squamous cell carcinoma on my face (right side of my nose, up near the eye).  So, after obsessing and gnashing my teeth for a few months, I bit the bullet and went to the dermatologist.

Not the same dermatologist as last time.  That woman came across as nothing more than a day spa diva who does a little half-assed dermatology on the side.  She just came across as . . . incompetent?  Inattentive?  Her whole office was full of nothing but adverts and displays for wrinkle creams, fat creams, massages, and mud baths.  Made me sad, because she was heavy, and very accepting of my weight--I felt comfortable allowing a full body check.  But she and her office staff . . . well, let's just say that, if I found out she'd been faking the medical degree, I wouldn't be surprised.  To be absolutely frank, she didn't come across as particularly well-educated.

So, they did a biopsy today.  The new, fascinatingly Ashkenazi-Armenian, dramatically more competent, intelligent, and "doctorly" seeming physician (yes, a physician, not a PAC like back in Utah) examined me, said she thought it was a basal, but couldn't be sure, so she was going to biopsy it and I'd have an answer in five days.  If it's basal or actinic keratosis, that's good.  We like that.  If it's squamous, we don't like that, but it's very small (somewhere between an eighth and a quarter of an inch across) and likely easily handled.  It doesn't look like anything Merkel or melanoma-ish.  Makes me sad, though--I'm tired of this, and I get the feeling I'm going to be paying for childhood sun exposure for the rest of my life.  Parents?

Put sunscreen on your kids.

On the bright side, they did manage to fit me in the day after I called.  That's super-helpful.  Cuts down on the paranoid waiting time.

I just squashed a "mosquito hawk" (you may know it as a Crane Fly)  Bugger's been in the house for weeks now.  Seriously, I didn't think they lived this long, but it's been around since before Christmas.  Hung out in the kitchen, up near the ceiling, so we left it alone.  But tonight it burst up from under/behind my monitor and right into my face.

Bye-bye, mosquito hawk.

Still sick.  Things are loosening up a bit, but that's not really such a good thing--that just gives me the hideous post-nasal drip throat itch that leaves me hacking.  Hate that.

Got Charlie some Dentastix "fresh" this time--he still loves them, but I don't notice any difference in his breath.  Speaking of Charlie, I think we have finally found a food mixture that he really, really likes--a mix of Castor and Pollux grain-free and Kirkland grain-free.  He doesn't just eat it because it's what there is, he seems to truly relish it.

I'm back on the Builder Bars.  Trying to get myself back into that groove.  The mint ones, of course--they satisfy the choco-candy bar craving.  If you haven't tried Builder Bars, you should--they taste a whole lot better than most of the energy/protein-type bars, and they're low glycemic, which means they don't spike my blood sugar.

I've come to like my new, big bottle of Boucheron eau de toilette.  See, I've been nursing along a very small bottle of the eau de parfum, and absolutely adored it.  Ordered the eau de toilette for Christmas and found the scent markedly different.  A high, soapy smell that really interfered with those opening notes.  Not sure what's happened, but either I've become accustomed to it or it's stopped doing that, because now I smell those opening notes.  And I'm in love again!



And that's it for now--off to Costco for stewed tomatoes, frozen strawberries, and other assorted sundries!  If the dog ever stops ringing the bell to go outside, that is.  

The Problem with Menopause/ICKY GIRL STUFF/AWFUL ATHEISM

You were warned.

*****************BEGIN ICKY GIRL STUFF***************

The problem with menopause?  Is that it's unpredictable.  It's pissy and dodgy and comes in fits and starts.  I'm not happy about "perimenopause."  There are a lot of things I regret in life, but only having one child has got to be top of the list. I always wanted a second, and even now, at 47 years old, I have to work very hard not to think about it too much, else my heart breaks.  Just another for the pile, I guess. 

Anyway, menopause.  To put it delicately, my "cycles" have been a bit less than reliable the past few months.  Skipping here, barely there there.  You know.  This month, I'm making up for it.  Epically.  Like, "At what point do I need an ambulance?" epically. 

****************END ICKY GIRL STUFF*****************

Add that that?  Lice.  Blew my back, hand, and shoulders out yesterday nit-combing our boy.  Took over an hour, and my hand still hurts.  Then hubby nit-combed me, and I him (as well as I could--his hair is very short).  Then the long, pain-in-the-ass process of washing all the bed linens (and rewashing all the clean clothes that had been next to the bed waiting to be put away) began.  We were going to wait until today on the fitted sheet and mattress pad beneath, but our Cairn Terrier Charlie made that decision for us.

He pissed on the bed last night.  No idea why.  No straining or behaving like he doesn't feel good, none of the behaviors I would expect from a dog with a UTI.  No, he just pissed on the bed.

Twice. This has never happened before.

It's happened nowhere else.  Only on the bed.  And only last night.  I don't know what's up with that, if the Christmas tree and the stink of permethrin have troubled him, or if the fact that the bed is where the permethrin smell is strongest has something to do with it.  First piss, he got the fitted sheet and the mattress pad.  Sadly, the second piss (which was much smaller) came after the mattress pad and sheet were in the wash.  In other words, he got mattress.  We do have enzymatic cleaner for just that purpose, but I'm now scared to death this is going to become a habit.  Considering that he's my heating pad when I'm napping cold, that's a tragedy for me.  If anyone has any ideas, I'm open.  I've read that it might be a weird show of submission or a statement of who the boss is and where she sleeps.  It's not a marking thing--he's not cocking leg to do this.  And, like I said, he's not doing it anywhere else--he's not abruptly squatting and pissing on the carpet or kitchen tile.  Only on the bed.

The computer is being increasingly stupid and bad.  Really laggy, really glitchy.  Shockwave and a couple of others crash frequently, sometimes within hours of a restart.  Yeah, I dump the cache.  Just too many competing programs, I think.  I fear it may be time to reformat and start from fresh.  Especially with the new game our boy's getting for Christmas. 

Speaking of Christmas, my present came yesterday--from Amazon, but delivered out of the back of a Budget Rental truck (?).  A big (3.3 ounce) bottle of Boucheron.  See, I got a very small bottle (maybe 1/5 of an ounce) a couple of years ago and fell in love.  I've made that tiny little purse-size bottle last because Boucheron is around $115.00 for a 3.3 ounce bottle.  Last week?  I found it marked down dramatically--40 bucks!  With free shipping!  So there it is--my bottle of Boucheron!  It's very sweet, very romantic and flowery, unlike the scents I normally go for.  But I love it--I've loved it since I first smelled it, though my "Unforgivable" (the really wonderful perfume with the unforgivably bad name) is in no danger of being bumped from its favorite slot.

Boucheron, Big and Small

Gonna wander back to religion for just a little.  Hey, I'm an atheist, so atheism comes up now and then.  I'd venture to say I don't dedicate nearly as much of my blog to atheism as many religious folks do to their particular faith. 

Okay.  Here we go.


******************BEGIN AWFUL ATHEISM********************



Remembering a discussion with a friend years ago, one that featured him insisting that it's not possible for him to be GOOD without EVIL.  In other words, if there weren't EVIL in the world, there would be no good, because everything must occur with opposition (?).  He went on to talk about how, without some deity, he can't be happy because . . . oh, heck, I don't remember what his point was.  Something about how, in order to be happy, we must also be sad and otherwise how can we know it's joy if we don't have sorrow or some such thing.  And then he said it.  You know.

IT.

"How can you know not to do bad without Jesus?"

You know, folks who say things like that scare the daylights out of me.  Because I'm left with the idea that there are bazillions of people out there who are one thin Gideon's Bible page away from murdering their neighbors, raping their daughters, and plundering every shop they walk by.  Are you SERIOUS? 

ARE YOU?

Are you really suggesting that, without a Bible, I won't know not to kill my neighbor's toddler or torture his poodle or rob banks?  Are you kidding?  What about people who've never read the bible?  Are they just murderous, raping, pillaging fools who have no morals?  And if that's so, why is the U.S. so highly religious AND so violent?  Why doesn't someplace like, say, Great Britain, with its hordes of godless atheists, have a murder rate that leaves ours in the dust? 

And do you really, really need religion to tell you what's right from wrong?  I ask because . . . because I don't believe that.  I can't--like I said, that's just too scary.  I don't do bad, cruel, violent things to other people because that's hurtful, and it's harmful, not just to them but to all of us.  I don't hit people or shoot them because I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end of that same thing.  I don't steal from others because it sucks to be stolen from.  I don't lie about others because it sucks to be lied about.  I don't cheat on my husband because it sucks to be cheated on.  Call that "the Golden Rule" if you wish, though it seriously pre-dates Christianity (Confucianism was saying "What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others" centuries before the advent of Christianity), call it "the Silver Rule," but recognize it for what it is--not some supernatural edict from the sky, but rather a common-sense idea that arises from our natural propensity toward empathy.  I don't do "evil" upon others because to do so is hurtful; if I wouldn't want that hurt coming down on me, why on earth would I do it to someone else?

If some holy book is the only thing standing between you and mayhem, if the threat of divine punishment is the only thing that keeps you in line, you've got some terrible issues and you scare the wits right out of me.

And that's that.  I've been kicking around writing an entry about how everyone is so sure their religion and their deity is the right one, and yet the overwhelming majority of people are of the faith predominant to their geographical area.  In other words, where you're born almost always determines your faith.  Which means that if you'd been born in Punjab instead of Pittsburgh, you'd almost certainly be of a different faith.  And you'd be proclaiming just as fervently that Sikhism was the true religion.  But now it looks as though I've already written it, so never mind.

*********************END AWFUL ATHEISM**********************


That's all.  I'm going to go scrub some toilets now, because there isn't much that makes me battier than dirty toilets.  Seriously, it's a "thing."