This has been a busy week again. I’ll write a proper post about it later this week, but in short, I had a fantastic time on Wednesday! It was wonderful to meet Heather and Dianne and to see Amy, Brenda and Tonia again. And then in the evening there were so many knitters packed into Dempsey’s! It was just fantastic!
Doug and I have been busy turning what was my crap room into my craft room.
Yarn Stash!
I’ve wanted one of those IKEA Expedit Units for years 🙂 Still have a bit more work to do in the room though before I can start making things in there again.
I also managed to buy some yarn from King Becky.
King Becky's Halloween Yarn Candy
I’ve wanted to buy some of her yarn candy for ages now. I love the way she’s photographed some of her skeins as though they were lollipops. This yarn is called Ombre and it’s a two tone yarn. It’s half Black Cat and half Spellbound. I can’t wait to knit this! But I also can’t quite decide what to make from it. I’m veering towards gloves at the moment. Since the black shade is caled Black Cat I’m hoping to get a picture of it with Emma soon. 🙂
Meanwhile two fraternal socks from Fyberspates sock yarn. I can’t remember when I started knitting the first one but it lay in a bag on its own for many years before I decided to cast on for what would be its sibling rather than its mate. I knit the second sock from the outside of the ball rather than from the centre as I normally do and I think that may be why the shading is so different.
Purple Fyberspates socks
I realised too late that the first sock had a ribbed cuff rather than the rolled cuff I prefer now. So the second sock is now too long to start the cuff. My options are to try and fix some of the stitches by turning them into purls with a crochet hook or frog down and begin the cuff again. Think I’ll try the crochet hook method first. In the meantime, while I was tidying the craft room I found another Fyberspates sock in progress so that’s now on the needles instead.
Now, I’ve had some health issues recently and I’m going to write about them here but there’s a warning just before.
If you’re of a nervous disposition, easily squicked out or don’t want to read swear words then I recommend that you stop reading RIGHT NOW. Go and look at Jeni’s or King Becky’s yarns or something.
Ok. Sure you want to stick around for this? I wasn’t sure about posting this tonight but I had to write about it as part of trying to process it.
A few months ago I developed what appeared to be some eczema on one of my breasts which just wouldn’t clear up. It became a wound that wouldn’t heal. Because of where it was located I was referred to the local hospital. I was told that this was a routine measure.
And then I found out that I had to have a mammogram because of my age – ie I’m an oldster at being over 35. I started to panic a bit about that. I hadn’t felt any lumps or anything but I was nervous that some would be found. And I’d also heard about how you got squeezed which sounded awful. They basically flatten you out so that they can take a good image of the tissue. They FLATTEN you! The radiographer was lovely, really she was and understood how awkward it was. But my god, when she asked me if I’d heard of the “squish”! Yeah, I didn’t look forward to that. A mammogram is a pretty painful procedure.
Today, a week after the mammogram, and I have my appointment with the consultant who looks at the area and tells me that although it resembles a type of cancer – at which point my head explodes because I had no idea that was such a thing – he doesn’t think it is that particular condition. They’ll have to take a skin biopsy. Ok, it’s not great but I was expecting that since they have to rule everything out. I’m told I’ll need a scan too. I go for the scan and the doctor there finds a dark area that she’s concerned about. I see it on the monitor and she says that it’s probably just inflamed tissue but she needs to take a biopsy too to rule things out. A deep needle biopsy. Suddenly I wish I’d had breakfast before I left the house earlier. As she explains what they need to do and that the biopsy needle device makes a bang like a stapler I start becoming concerned that I may faint. That, since I’ve had to budge over so that she can sit on the bed to do the scan, I will faint and fall off the bed. “Do you understand what I’m saying or have you gone somewhere?” she asks. I’ve taken every word in but dear god if I could have gone somewhere, anywhere, I would have.
They give me two doses of local anaesthetic and that’s the most painful part of the procedure, really. Everything else is in my head. I try and distance myself, try and become detached, try not to think of the fucking big needle I’ve just seen. The needle that’s going where no needle should. I focus instead on bits of the room, looking at the ceiling. “It’s going to make a bang now” “Safety switch off” and the first stapling sound which once the needle is in me is a lot quieter and less scary than when they demonstrated the noise to me. The nurse is lovely, the doctor is very nice too but I focus more on the nurse. I had mentioned to her that my surname is Iranian, that it’s all I have of my father and that I’ll probably never be able to visit the country in my lifetime. On either the second or third biopsy she says “I bet you wish you were in Iran now.”! I don’t think she realises what she’s actually said! Bless her, she’s trying to be nice. I point out that that what happens to people over there is probably a lot worse than these biopsies.
I go back to the waiting area and rescue the stitches of my sock that have fallen off one of the needles. I try and focus on knitting but my mind is racing, my head’s everywhere. I go from thoughts of how it’ll be fine and that I’m a strong person, to wanting to cry. It seems silly since it’ll probably be ok. I hate sitting in that waiting room. Really, really hate it. Earlier I heard a woman talking to her friend about how she’d found two more lumps in the same breast where she’d previously had a tumour removed. She’d decided that this time she would have a mastectomy. That does not add to my comfort levels. I wait and eventually I’m called for the skin biopsy. In the cubical it feels like an age before the nurse and consultant arrive although I’m sure it wasn’t that long. I’m freaking out in my head thinking of that darkened tissue. The anaesthetic injection seems more painful this time but this biopsy is a lot easier and is over very quickly.
I get my results on Thursday. I’m still veering between things being fine and worrying. I wrestled over whether to tell my mother about the procedures. I didn’t want her worrying about them but it would also have felt quite wrong to withhold the information. She won’t see this post because she dislikes using computers. I was told some women go to the clinic end up having biopsies and don’t tell their husbands. I really can’t understand how they wouldn’t be able to notice though.
I can’t think how to end this blog now. I don’t want to leave you all on a downer but I can’t be super positive about it either. I still feel very up and down about things and will do so until I get my results on Thursday.
