Technical Writer

Alive!

It wasn't until yesterday that I received the call I've been awaiting, and it followed a series of progressively serious diagnostic tests, ending last Thursday with a biopsy that I could watch on screen because it was guided by ultrasound.  Early that morning at the hospital, I trained my eyes on the far wall of the procedure room when lidocaine was injected in a few places. I was fixed on the screen above me as the sonogram wand located the areas of concern, again. 

My eyes never left the screen when an apparatus was pressed up against me and a long needle was pushed inside, right up against a tiny, dark mass, then the second one, four times each.  When the needle was up against the mass, the physician pressed a trigger and with a loud report the needle was shot into the trouble spot.  The core sample, for such it was, was removed, and the procedure was repeated again and again. It was fascinating to watch on screen, there, not here.

Benign!  What a sweet word. Relief washed over me yesterday and surprised me because I didn't realize that I needed relief. I had been keeping busy.  

Wondering if things might not turn out for the best, I decided last week that at least I could help my husband prepare for what would surely be a lonely, miserable (and brief) life without me.  My sisters and I still laugh at the conversation we once had about what would happen to our husbands should we die first. We seriously discussed their abilities to negotiate life on their own, and concluded that only one would survive the first year.  My own husband, we determined, would be the second one to go. Even though he has nearly lifelong friends, and has picked up real friends along the way, and despite the fact that he somehow managed as a young professor to raise a child on his own, and with just partial sight earned a PhD in economics, without me, he was a marked man. 

What could I do right now to give him the edge I knew he might need?  I cleaned house with a righteous zest that left no corner untouched. 

I decided that what was packed away, if not potentially useful over the course of a long life, just had to go.  Then I turned my attention to the garden, and hauled yard waste to the town dump.  Get rid of the waste. Don't let it fester and breed disease. Work work push push.  I felt great. 

Then last week a letter came from the hospital urging me to contact my physician.  The letter drove right out of my mind that the physician had said the letter was on its way to me, and that our arrangements were already in place.  I read the letter in hand, and my mind was frozen on its contents, my heart began pounding, my breath come in gasps and sweat beaded my face.  Who is this person?

It's never too early to begin paying attention to the urges and impulses of corrective behavior that accompany the slightest impression that something is not quite right.  I was pretty certain that my situation was essentially harmless to me, but I wasn't fully aware how disjointed was my intellectual grasp of my situation and my ignored emotional response. The emotional response is what surfaces in a panic, and panic arises when fear displaces reasoning.  Nothing good comes of fear, but if it is there and ignored, it is preserved, ready to be loosed without controls. 

I hope that I am a reformed citizen.

Saturday Flowers March 7

If three of the bright red tulips seem a little too boom-boom-boom, it's because they are.   As the days pass, the other tulips will droop while continuing to grow, and in a few days I'll change the water and trim the ends so they will last the week.  Michelle Blank, the owner of Flowers by Jim in Frederick, will look at this and think, "What Horror!" but then she has to please her many customers who want their arrangements to look beautiful and professionally composed, in their Sunday or wedding-day best so to speak. I'm after informality on my kitchen table.

Michelle's shop this morning was fresh and sparkling, and the back work room was filled with stately and gorgeous wedding arrangements.  Next Saturday, I might ask her if I may snap a few pictures of the shop to show you the art on the walls.  She has pieces collected over many years, and they are worth examining. If Michelle has flowers on her counter top in the sales room, I'll show you those, too.  The counter is dark wood, and antique, and on it she keeps single-color blossoms in a small vase. Those flowers are past their sell-by freshness but remain lovely and arresting nonetheless.

Here is what remains of last Saturday's flowers.    

Michelle added a single lily bud nearly hidden in the blooms, and the lily opened yesterday.

My Own E-mail from Nigeria

Today I achieved membership in a crowd of people who have received e-mail scams involving Nigerian bank accounts. My hotmail account in-box is where I found this, and because it looked suspicious I did not open the thing and instead checked the status of the sender, wherein I found this text embedded in html code.  Here is the text itself, for your edification.

X-OriginalArrivalTime: 05 Mar 2009 20:00:56.0387 (UTC) FILETIME=[18A19930:01C99DCD]

I know this mail will come to you as a surprise since we have not had previous correspondence. I am 19 years old boy from Ivory Coast West Africa.</DIV>

My sufferings began after our president killed my parents and my only sister because my father was an opposition leader to the president of my country (Ivory Coast West Africa) I am the only child of my late parents. Since then I have been with my uncles but they have made thing to be more difficult for me because of their eyes on my late father’s properties. They planned to take away all my late father's properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved Parents.</DIV>

Before the death of my father, he has $2.5 m USD (Two million, five hundred thousand dollars.) in account with a bank in Côte d’Ivoire that I am the next of kin. I need your assistance to help get this money transferred to your account, to serve as my guardian and to make an arrangement for me to come over after the fund is transferred, also to look for a good venture where the money will be invested.

I am willing to offer you 10% of the total sum as compensation of your effort. Note that the confidentiality of this transaction would be highly appreciated in replying soonest to my private email address:(I deleted the e-mail to save you from yourself. --tech writer)

Thanks and best regards.

Peter

Wordle Word Cloud Fun

Saturday Flowers 2.28

I took the photo of yesterday's fresh flowers this morning after breakfast was cleared away.  Perhaps empty oatmeal bowls and mugs of Typhoo tea would be interesting, but my focus is flowers and as you can see, the Sunday papers. The economic news is dire, and reading it I feel washed in the negative zeitgeist of our time.  Bright yellow roses and tulips, larkspur and bells of Ireland that are the scent of heaven itself help keep me steady and disbelieving that negativity is truth.  Negativity comes in many forms.

I was beset recently by a woman bearing a tract, which in her context had only one meaning. To prevent the conversation that was bearing down on me like a Mack truck would have taken a bit of rudeness on my part because I haven't figured a way to prevent except by avoidance being accosted by one bearing the opportunity for salvation.   Do you know the sound of a person in full grasp of her certainty, the warmth and conviction that announces in other words, "Run!" ? At that moment however, the god of benevolence and good humor intervened for my attention.

It is so easy to become ensnared by our convictions that we forget to see the universe of those whose paths are lit by other lamps casting the same broad light.  Look into any crowd and see all the people for what they are, the representatives of what they believe to be true.  It helps to see indisputable beauty first, second, and always, and this helps define all other sightings.