Sunday, September 26, 2010

15 Books

The rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me, because I'm interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note.)


1. "Dandelion Wine" by Ray Bradbury
2. "The Mist" by Stephen King
3. "Robots of Dawn" series by Isaac Asimov
4. "Murphy´s Boy" by Torey Hayden
5. "New Testament" multiple authors...not because of the religion but because I remember going through the short stories particularly The Good Samaritan.
6. "The Good Earth" by Pearl Buck
7. "Like Water for Chocolate" by Laura Esquivel
8. "The House of the Spirits" by Isabelle Allende
9. "The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien
10."Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair" by NeftalĂ­ Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
11. "The Good Omen" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
12. "Amina Among the Angels" by Merlie Alunan
13. "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
14. " A Question of Heroes" by Nick Joaquin...repeatedly checked out this book from the STC main library so many times.
15."The Happy Hustler" by Grant Tracy Saxon

Monday, September 06, 2010

Let´s talk about the elephant in the room


UP UNTIL the fourth grade, Mama would wrap my head in a towel before going to sleep. Doing this helped me avoid the effects of dawn temperature changes. On days when this ritual was forgotten, I would wake up sneezing, teary-eyed and runny-nosed until about 8am when the sun was high in the sky and the temperature stable. Allergic rhinitis is in fact is how Mama eventually declared me as her living barometer.

It was not surprising then that in moving to Iceland (where you could expect four seasons in one day) I encountered difficulties in adjusting to the weather. This peaked a few months ago when it became so bad that I had to sleep sitting up. It scared me enough to make an appointment with a doctor.

Two weeks later, there I was twiddling my thumbs and trying to compose in my head a litany of symptoms (half of them already gone in the two weeks waiting to see the doctor) in Icelandic. When I walked into the examination room, greeting me was a framed "American Academy of Physicians" certificate so off went the carefully researched  Icelandic medical terms and I happily rattled off medicalese in English. So satisfying...but I digress. 

My fifty-ish doctor ( age being a good thing otherwise I would´ve walked out) promptly scribbled off a  prescription for a nasal corticosteroid spray. Everything all clear and well-diagnosed. Or so, we thought until on my way out I happened to mention if it would be alright if he checked this probable lump on my throat. I was half-embarrassed about it because it could just very well be an advancing second chin. Except that, with sonogram in hand he turns around and says, "Yes, there seems to be a well-defined mass."

Uh, okay. 

Since then, I have been to blood tests, ultrasounds and biopsies which in summation arrived at an unsatisfactory conclusion: thyroid carcinoma. It is supposed to be papillary, the curable kind, but the biopsy report also mentioned undefined cellular mutations which can only be classified and identified by an actual specimen (and not through cells sucked out by a thin, abnormally long needle). 

The Big C is a family thing and more than a few in every generation gets initiated into the club. I just never thought that I would be the first in my batch.

Well, there it is. The elephant in the room that I have never as yet publicly discussed except with the few who I thought ought to know directly from me. It could be that I cannot call everyone who matters seeing that overseas calls are expensive and everyone´s just spread out all over the world. So, I blog instead. 

On September 8 (which happens to be a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics and Mother Mary´s birthday) I will for the first time go under the knife. After that auspicious date I will go on sick leave. Time on my hands and hopefully enough blogging hours will allow me to add to the meager first-person information on thyroid cancer in the internet. It will also be my self-purging, a therapeutic addition to my post-op recovery. Besides, writing has always been my life and allows me to connect from the old world, cold world. 

I hope you keep me company in this new adventure, another fork in the path.